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SAA-C03 — all questions

1019 practice questions with answers and explanations.

SAA-C03 Question 1

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Topic 1 · Question 1

A company collects data for temperature, humidity, and atmospheric pressure in cities across multiple continents. The average volume of data that the company collects from each site daily is 500 GB. Each site has a high-speed Internet connection. The company wants to aggregate the data from all these global sites as quickly as possible in a single Amazon S3 bucket. The solution must minimize operational complexity. Which solution meets these requirements?

  • ATurn on S3 Transfer Acceleration on the destination S3 bucket. Use multipart uploads to directly upload site data to the destination S3 bucket. (correct answer)
  • BUpload the data from each site to an S3 bucket in the closest Region. Use S3 Cross-Region Replication to copy objects to the destination S3 bucket. Then remove the data from the origin S3 bucket.
  • CSchedule AWS Snowball Edge Storage Optimized device jobs daily to transfer data from each site to the closest Region. Use S3 Cross-Region Replication to copy objects to the destination S3 bucket.
  • DUpload the data from each site to an Amazon EC2 instance in the closest Region. Store the data in an Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume. At regular intervals, take an EBS snapshot and copy it to the Region that contains the destination S3 bucket. Restore the EBS volume in that Region.
Reveal answer & explanation
Correct answer: A

Correct: A. S3 Transfer Acceleration uploads through the nearest edge location and rides AWS's private backbone to the destination bucket, which is ideal for moving 500 GB/day from sites on different continents with almost nothing to manage; multipart uploads add parallelism. B (Cross-Region Replication) stores the data twice and adds replication plus cleanup steps. C (Snowball Edge) suits sites with poor bandwidth, not high-speed links, and daily device shipping is far slower. D rebuilds a manual EC2/EBS snapshot pipeline that S3 already solves natively.

SAA-C03 Question 2

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Topic 1 · Question 2

A company needs the ability to analyze the log files of its proprietary application. The logs are stored in JSON format in an Amazon S3 bucket. Queries will be simple and will run on-demand. A solutions architect needs to perform the analysis with minimal changes to the existing architecture. What should the solutions architect do to meet these requirements with the LEAST amount of operational overhead?

  • AUse Amazon Redshift to load all the content into one place and run the SQL queries as needed.
  • BUse Amazon CloudWatch Logs to store the logs. Run SQL queries as needed from the Amazon CloudWatch console.
  • CUse Amazon Athena directly with Amazon S3 to run the queries as needed. (correct answer)
  • DUse AWS Glue to catalog the logs. Use a transient Apache Spark cluster on Amazon EMR to run the SQL queries as needed.
Reveal answer & explanation
Correct answer: C

Correct: C. Amazon Athena runs serverless, on-demand SQL directly against the JSON in S3, so simple ad-hoc queries need no new infrastructure or data movement — the least operational overhead. A (Redshift) requires provisioning a cluster and loading the data first. B (CloudWatch Logs) means moving the logs out of S3. D (Glue + EMR Spark) adds a catalog and a Spark cluster, far more than simple on-demand queries require.

SAA-C03 Question 3

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Topic 1 · Question 3

A company uses AWS Organizations to manage multiple AWS accounts for different departments. The management account has an Amazon S3 bucket that contains project reports. The company wants to limit access to this S3 bucket to only users of accounts within the organization in AWS Organizations. Which solution meets these requirements with the LEAST amount of operational overhead?

  • AAdd the aws PrincipalOrgID global condition key with a reference to the organization ID to the S3 bucket policy. (correct answer)
  • BCreate an organizational unit (OU) for each department. Add the aws:PrincipalOrgPaths global condition key to the S3 bucket policy.
  • CUse AWS CloudTrail to monitor the CreateAccount, InviteAccountToOrganization, LeaveOrganization, and RemoveAccountFromOrganization events. Update the S3 bucket policy accordingly.
  • DTag each user that needs access to the S3 bucket. Add the aws:PrincipalTag global condition key to the S3 bucket policy.
Reveal answer & explanation
Correct answer: A

Correct: A. Adding the aws:PrincipalOrgID condition to the bucket policy restricts access to any principal in your AWS Organization in a single line, and it stays current automatically as accounts join or leave. B (aws:PrincipalOrgPaths) targets specific OU paths — more granular than needed and more to maintain. C (CloudTrail-driven policy updates) is a brittle custom automation. D (tagging every user) is high-maintenance and error-prone.

SAA-C03 Question 4

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Topic 1 · Question 4

An application runs on an Amazon EC2 instance in a VPC. The application processes logs that are stored in an Amazon S3 bucket. The EC2 instance needs to access the S3 bucket without connectivity to the internet. Which solution will provide private network connectivity to Amazon S3?

  • ACreate a gateway VPC endpoint to the S3 bucket. (correct answer)
  • BStream the logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs. Export the logs to the S3 bucket.
  • CCreate an instance profile on Amazon EC2 to allow S3 access.
  • DCreate an Amazon API Gateway API with a private link to access the S3 endpoint.
Reveal answer & explanation
Correct answer: A

Correct: A. A gateway VPC endpoint for S3 adds a route in the VPC route table so the instance reaches S3 privately over the AWS network — no internet gateway, NAT, or extra cost. B routes logs through CloudWatch, a different workflow rather than private S3 access. C (instance profile) grants permissions but still needs a network path to S3. D (API Gateway) doesn't provide private VPC-to-S3 connectivity for this case.

SAA-C03 Question 5

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Topic 1 · Question 5

A company is hosting a web application on AWS using a single Amazon EC2 instance that stores user-uploaded documents in an Amazon EBS volume. For better scalability and availability, the company duplicated the architecture and created a second EC2 instance and EBS volume in another Availability Zone, placing both behind an Application Load Balancer. After completing this change, users reported that, each time they refreshed the website, they could see one subset of their documents or the other, but never all of the documents at the same time. What should a solutions architect propose to ensure users see all of their documents at once?

  • ACopy the data so both EBS volumes contain all the documents
  • BConfigure the Application Load Balancer to direct a user to the server with the documents
  • CCopy the data from both EBS volumes to Amazon EFS. Modify the application to save new documents to Amazon EFS (correct answer)
  • DConfigure the Application Load Balancer to send the request to both servers. Return each document from the correct server
Reveal answer & explanation
Correct answer: C

Correct: C. Each instance has its own EBS volume, so each sees only the documents uploaded to it. Amazon EFS is a shared NFS file system that instances across AZs mount simultaneously, giving every instance the same complete set of files. A (copying between EBS volumes) drifts out of sync immediately. B and D try to paper over the split with ALB routing, which still can't return the full document set on a single request.

SAA-C03 Question 6

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Topic 1 · Question 6

A company uses NFS to store large video files in on-premises network attached storage. Each video file ranges in size from 1 MB to 500 GB. The total storage is 70 TB and is no longer growing. The company decides to migrate the video files to Amazon S3. The company must migrate the video files as soon as possible while using the least possible network bandwidth. Which solution will meet these requirements?

  • ACreate an S3 bucket. Create an IAM role that has permissions to write to the S3 bucket. Use the AWS CLI to copy all files locally to the S3 bucket.
  • BCreate an AWS Snowball Edge job. Receive a Snowball Edge device on premises. Use the Snowball Edge client to transfer data to the device. Return the device so that AWS can import the data into Amazon S3. (correct answer)
  • CDeploy an S3 File Gateway on premises. Create a public service endpoint to connect to the S3 File Gateway. Create an S3 bucket. Create a new NFS file share on the S3 File Gateway. Point the new file share to the S3 bucket. Transfer the data from the existing NFS file share to the S3 File Gateway.
  • DSet up an AWS Direct Connect connection between the on-premises network and AWS. Deploy an S3 File Gateway on premises. Create a public virtual interface (VIF) to connect to the S3 File Gateway. Create an S3 bucket. Create a new NFS file share on the S3 File Gateway. Point the new file share to the S3 bucket. Transfer the data from the existing NFS file share to the S3 File Gateway.
Reveal answer & explanation
Correct answer: B

Correct: B. Moving 70 TB 'as soon as possible while using the least network bandwidth' means shipping the data physically: Snowball Edge transfers offline and AWS imports it into S3, using essentially no internet bandwidth. A (AWS CLI) pushes all 70 TB over the network. C (S3 File Gateway) and D (Direct Connect + File Gateway) also transfer online — and D adds the lead time and cost of provisioning Direct Connect.

SAA-C03 Question 7

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Topic 1 · Question 7

A company has an application that ingests incoming messages. Dozens of other applications and microservices then quickly consume these messages. The number of messages varies drastically and sometimes increases suddenly to 100,000 each second. The company wants to decouple the solution and increase scalability. Which solution meets these requirements?

  • APersist the messages to Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics. Configure the consumer applications to read and process the messages.
  • BDeploy the ingestion application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group to scale the number of EC2 instances based on CPU metrics.
  • CWrite the messages to Amazon Kinesis Data Streams with a single shard. Use an AWS Lambda function to preprocess messages and store them in Amazon DynamoDB. Configure the consumer applications to read from DynamoDB to process the messages.
  • DPublish the messages to an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic with multiple Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SOS) subscriptions. Configure the consumer applications to process the messages from the queues. (correct answer)
Reveal answer & explanation
Correct answer: D

Correct: D. Dozens of consumers that each need every message is a fan-out pattern: publish once to an SNS topic, and each consumer reads from its own SQS queue subscribed to that topic. The queues buffer sudden spikes of 100,000 messages/second and let each consumer scale independently. A (Kinesis Data Analytics) is for streaming SQL, not fan-out delivery. B scales only ingestion, not the consumers. C uses a single-shard stream that caps throughput and couples everything through DynamoDB.

SAA-C03 Question 8

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Topic 1 · Question 8

A company is migrating a distributed application to AWS. The application serves variable workloads. The legacy platform consists of a primary server that coordinates jobs across multiple compute nodes. The company wants to modernize the application with a solution that maximizes resiliency and scalability. How should a solutions architect design the architecture to meet these requirements?

  • AConfigure an Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) queue as a destination for the jobs. Implement the compute nodes with Amazon EC2 instances that are managed in an Auto Scaling group. Configure EC2 Auto Scaling to use scheduled scaling.
  • BConfigure an Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) queue as a destination for the jobs. Implement the compute nodes with Amazon EC2 instances that are managed in an Auto Scaling group. Configure EC2 Auto Scaling based on the size of the queue. (correct answer)
  • CImplement the primary server and the compute nodes with Amazon EC2 instances that are managed in an Auto Scaling group. Configure AWS CloudTrail as a destination for the jobs. Configure EC2 Auto Scaling based on the load on the primary server.
  • DImplement the primary server and the compute nodes with Amazon EC2 instances that are managed in an Auto Scaling group. Configure Amazon EventBridge (Amazon CloudWatch Events) as a destination for the jobs. Configure EC2 Auto Scaling based on the load on the compute nodes.
Reveal answer & explanation
Correct answer: B

Correct: B. Replacing the single coordinator with an SQS queue and scaling the compute Auto Scaling group on queue length ties capacity directly to the backlog of jobs, maximizing resilience for the variable workload. A uses scheduled scaling, which ignores real demand. C and D keep a single primary server — a bottleneck and single point of failure — and scale on server or node load instead of the work waiting in the queue.

SAA-C03 Question 9

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Topic 1 · Question 9

A company is running an SMB file server in its data center. The file server stores large files that are accessed frequently for the first few days after the files are created. After 7 days the files are rarely accessed. The total data size is increasing and is close to the company's total storage capacity. A solutions architect must increase the company's available storage space without losing low-latency access to the most recently accessed files. The solutions architect must also provide file lifecycle management to avoid future storage issues. Which solution will meet these requirements?

  • AUse AWS DataSync to copy data that is older than 7 days from the SMB file server to AWS.
  • BCreate an Amazon S3 File Gateway to extend the company's storage space. Create an S3 Lifecycle policy to transition the data to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 7 days. (correct answer)
  • CCreate an Amazon FSx for Windows File Server file system to extend the company's storage space.
  • DInstall a utility on each user's computer to access Amazon S3. Create an S3 Lifecycle policy to transition the data to S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval after 7 days.
Reveal answer & explanation
Correct answer: B

Correct: B. S3 File Gateway presents an SMB/NFS share backed by S3 and caches recently used files locally, so it adds capacity while keeping low-latency access to new files; an S3 Lifecycle rule then archives files to Glacier Deep Archive after 7 days. A (DataSync) is a copy tool, not ongoing tiered storage. C (FSx for Windows) adds space but no lifecycle tiering. D drops the local cache and needs a utility on every desktop.

SAA-C03 Question 10

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Topic 1 · Question 10

A company is building an ecommerce web application on AWS. The application sends information about new orders to an Amazon API Gateway REST API to process. The company wants to ensure that orders are processed in the order that they are received. Which solution will meet these requirements?

  • AUse an API Gateway integration to publish a message to an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic when the application receives an order. Subscribe an AWS Lambda function to the topic to perform processing.
  • BUse an API Gateway integration to send a message to an Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) FIFO queue when the application receives an order. Configure the SQS FIFO queue to invoke an AWS Lambda function for processing. (correct answer)
  • CUse an API Gateway authorizer to block any requests while the application processes an order.
  • DUse an API Gateway integration to send a message to an Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) standard queue when the application receives an order. Configure the SQS standard queue to invoke an AWS Lambda function for processing.
Reveal answer & explanation
Correct answer: B

Correct: B. 'Processed in the order received' requires a FIFO queue: an API Gateway to SQS FIFO integration preserves exact ordering (and exactly-once processing) before Lambda consumes the messages. A (SNS) and D (SQS standard) provide only best-effort ordering. C (blocking requests with an authorizer) is not how you enforce processing order and would break the API.

SAA-C03 Question 11

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Topic 1 · Question 11

A company has an application that runs on Amazon EC2 instances and uses an Amazon Aurora database. The EC2 instances connect to the database by using user names and passwords that are stored locally in a file. The company wants to minimize the operational overhead of credential management. What should a solutions architect do to accomplish this goal?

  • AUse AWS Secrets Manager. Turn on automatic rotation. (correct answer)
  • BUse AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store. Turn on automatic rotation.
  • CCreate an Amazon S3 bucket to store objects that are encrypted with an AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) encryption key. Migrate the credential file to the S3 bucket. Point the application to the S3 bucket.
  • DCreate an encrypted Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume for each EC2 instance. Attach the new EBS volume to each EC2 instance. Migrate the credential file to the new EBS volume. Point the application to the new EBS volume.
Reveal answer & explanation
Correct answer: A

Correct: A. Secrets Manager is built to store database credentials and rotate them automatically, with native Aurora/RDS integration — it removes the local file and the manual rotation work. B (Parameter Store) can hold secrets but has no built-in rotation; you'd build and run the rotation yourself. C and D just relocate a static credential file to S3 or EBS, with no rotation and more to manage.

SAA-C03 Question 12

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Topic 1 · Question 12

A global company hosts its web application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The web application has static data and dynamic data. The company stores its static data in an Amazon S3 bucket. The company wants to improve performance and reduce latency for the static data and dynamic data. The company is using its own domain name registered with Amazon Route 53. What should a solutions architect do to meet these requirements?

  • ACreate an Amazon CloudFront distribution that has the S3 bucket and the ALB as origins. Configure Route 53 to route traffic to the CloudFront distribution. (correct answer)
  • BCreate an Amazon CloudFront distribution that has the ALB as an origin. Create an AWS Global Accelerator standard accelerator that has the S3 bucket as an endpoint Configure Route 53 to route traffic to the CloudFront distribution.
  • CCreate an Amazon CloudFront distribution that has the S3 bucket as an origin. Create an AWS Global Accelerator standard accelerator that has the ALB and the CloudFront distribution as endpoints. Create a custom domain name that points to the accelerator DNS name. Use the custom domain name as an endpoint for the web application.
  • DCreate an Amazon CloudFront distribution that has the ALB as an origin. Create an AWS Global Accelerator standard accelerator that has the S3 bucket as an endpoint. Create two domain names. Point one domain name to the CloudFront DNS name for dynamic content. Point the other domain name to the accelerator DNS name for static content. Use the domain names as endpoints for the web application.
Reveal answer & explanation
Correct answer: A

Correct: A. One CloudFront distribution can have two origins — the S3 bucket for static content and the ALB for dynamic content — caching at edge locations to cut latency for both, with Route 53 pointing the domain at CloudFront. B, C, and D add Global Accelerator and extra domain names; Global Accelerator improves raw TCP/UDP path performance but isn't needed to speed up cacheable static + dynamic web content that CloudFront already handles.

SAA-C03 Question 13

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Topic 1 · Question 13

A company performs monthly maintenance on its AWS infrastructure. During these maintenance activities, the company needs to rotate the credentials for its Amazon RDS for MySQL databases across multiple AWS Regions. Which solution will meet these requirements with the LEAST operational overhead?

  • AStore the credentials as secrets in AWS Secrets Manager. Use multi-Region secret replication for the required Regions. Configure Secrets Manager to rotate the secrets on a schedule. (correct answer)
  • BStore the credentials as secrets in AWS Systems Manager by creating a secure string parameter. Use multi-Region secret replication for the required Regions. Configure Systems Manager to rotate the secrets on a schedule.
  • CStore the credentials in an Amazon S3 bucket that has server-side encryption (SSE) enabled. Use Amazon EventBridge (Amazon CloudWatch Events) to invoke an AWS Lambda function to rotate the credentials.
  • DEncrypt the credentials as secrets by using AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) multi-Region customer managed keys. Store the secrets in an Amazon DynamoDB global table. Use an AWS Lambda function to retrieve the secrets from DynamoDB. Use the RDS API to rotate the secrets.
Reveal answer & explanation
Correct answer: A

Correct: A. Secrets Manager supports multi-Region replica secrets and scheduled automatic rotation for RDS/MySQL credentials, covering all required Regions with the least effort. B (Systems Manager secure string) has no built-in rotation. C (S3 + EventBridge + Lambda) and D (KMS multi-Region keys + DynamoDB global table + Lambda) are custom rotation pipelines that are far more work to build and operate.

SAA-C03 Question 14

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Topic 1 · Question 14

A company runs an ecommerce application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The instances run in an Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling group across multiple Availability Zones. The Auto Scaling group scales based on CPU utilization metrics. The ecommerce application stores the transaction data in a MySQL 8.0 database that is hosted on a large EC2 instance. The database's performance degrades quickly as application load increases. The application handles more read requests than write transactions. The company wants a solution that will automatically scale the database to meet the demand of unpredictable read workloads while maintaining high availability. Which solution will meet these requirements?

  • AUse Amazon Redshift with a single node for leader and compute functionality.
  • BUse Amazon RDS with a Single-AZ deployment Configure Amazon RDS to add reader instances in a different Availability Zone.
  • CUse Amazon Aurora with a Multi-AZ deployment. Configure Aurora Auto Scaling with Aurora Replicas. (correct answer)
  • DUse Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached with EC2 Spot Instances.
Reveal answer & explanation
Correct answer: C

Correct: C. The workload is read-heavy and needs automatic read scaling with high availability: Aurora in a Multi-AZ deployment provides failover, and Aurora Auto Scaling adds or removes Aurora Replicas to absorb unpredictable read traffic. A (single-node Redshift) is a data warehouse, not an OLTP MySQL replacement. B (Single-AZ RDS) isn't highly available and scales readers manually. D (ElastiCache) is a cache, not a durable scalable database.

SAA-C03 Question 15

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Topic 1 · Question 15

A company recently migrated to AWS and wants to implement a solution to protect the traffic that flows in and out of the production VPC. The company had an inspection server in its on-premises data center. The inspection server performed specific operations such as traffic flow inspection and traffic filtering. The company wants to have the same functionalities in the AWS Cloud. Which solution will meet these requirements?

  • AUse Amazon GuardDuty for traffic inspection and traffic filtering in the production VPC.
  • BUse Traffic Mirroring to mirror traffic from the production VPC for traffic inspection and filtering.
  • CUse AWS Network Firewall to create the required rules for traffic inspection and traffic filtering for the production VPC. (correct answer)
  • DUse AWS Firewall Manager to create the required rules for traffic inspection and traffic filtering for the production VPC.
Reveal answer & explanation
Correct answer: C

Correct: C. AWS Network Firewall is a managed stateful firewall for a VPC that does exactly what the on-prem appliance did — traffic inspection and filtering with custom rules. A (GuardDuty) is threat detection, not inline filtering. B (Traffic Mirroring) only copies packets for out-of-band analysis and can't filter. D (Firewall Manager) centrally manages firewall policies across accounts but isn't itself the inspection engine for one VPC.

SAA-C03 Question 16

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Topic 1 · Question 16

A company hosts a data lake on AWS. The data lake consists of data in Amazon S3 and Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. The company needs a reporting solution that provides data visualization and includes all the data sources within the data lake. Only the company's management team should have full access to all the visualizations. The rest of the company should have only limited access. Which solution will meet these requirements?

  • ACreate an analysis in Amazon QuickSight. Connect all the data sources and create new datasets. Publish dashboards to visualize the data. Share the dashboards with the appropriate IAM roles.
  • BCreate an analysis in Amazon QuickSight. Connect all the data sources and create new datasets. Publish dashboards to visualize the data. Share the dashboards with the appropriate users and groups. (correct answer)
  • CCreate an AWS Glue table and crawler for the data in Amazon S3. Create an AWS Glue extract, transform, and load (ETL) job to produce reports. Publish the reports to Amazon S3. Use S3 bucket policies to limit access to the reports.
  • DCreate an AWS Glue table and crawler for the data in Amazon S3. Use Amazon Athena Federated Query to access data within Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. Generate reports by using Amazon Athena. Publish the reports to Amazon S3. Use S3 bucket policies to limit access to the reports.
Reveal answer & explanation
Correct answer: B

Correct: B. QuickSight connects to both S3 and RDS for PostgreSQL, builds interactive dashboards, and controls visibility by sharing with QuickSight users and groups — the native way to give management full access and everyone else limited access. A is almost identical but shares with 'IAM roles,' which isn't how QuickSight dashboard access is granted. C and D (Glue/Athena to static reports) provide no interactive visualization.

SAA-C03 Question 17

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Topic 1 · Question 17

A company is implementing a new business application. The application runs on two Amazon EC2 instances and uses an Amazon S3 bucket for document storage. A solutions architect needs to ensure that the EC2 instances can access the S3 bucket. What should the solutions architect do to meet this requirement?

  • ACreate an IAM role that grants access to the S3 bucket. Attach the role to the EC2 instances. (correct answer)
  • BCreate an IAM policy that grants access to the S3 bucket. Attach the policy to the EC2 instances.
  • CCreate an IAM group that grants access to the S3 bucket. Attach the group to the EC2 instances.
  • DCreate an IAM user that grants access to the S3 bucket. Attach the user account to the EC2 instances.
Reveal answer & explanation
Correct answer: A

Correct: A. An IAM role attached through an instance profile gives the instances temporary, automatically rotated credentials for S3 — the AWS best practice. B, C, and D reflect a misunderstanding: you don't attach a policy, group, or IAM user directly to an EC2 instance. Policies attach to roles, and an IAM user would mean long-lived access keys you'd have to manage.

SAA-C03 Question 18

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Topic 1 · Question 18 · Select all that apply

An application development team is designing a microservice that will convert large images to smaller, compressed images. When a user uploads an image through the web interface, the microservice should store the image in an Amazon S3 bucket, process and compress the image with an AWS Lambda function, and store the image in its compressed form in a different S3 bucket. A solutions architect needs to design a solution that uses durable, stateless components to process the images automatically. Which combination of actions will meet these requirements? (Choose two.)

  • ACreate an Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) queue. Configure the S3 bucket to send a notification to the SQS queue when an image is uploaded to the S3 bucket. (correct answer)
  • BConfigure the Lambda function to use the Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) queue as the invocation source. When the SQS message is successfully processed, delete the message in the queue. (correct answer)
  • CConfigure the Lambda function to monitor the S3 bucket for new uploads. When an uploaded image is detected, write the file name to a text file in memory and use the text file to keep track of the images that were processed.
  • DLaunch an Amazon EC2 instance to monitor an Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) queue. When items are added to the queue, log the file name in a text file on the EC2 instance and invoke the Lambda function.
  • EConfigure an Amazon EventBridge (Amazon CloudWatch Events) event to monitor the S3 bucket. When an image is uploaded, send an alert to an Amazon ample Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic with the application owner's email address for further processing.
Reveal answer & explanation
Correct answer: A, B

Correct: A and B. For durable, stateless processing, have S3 send an event to an SQS queue on upload (A), and configure Lambda to consume from that queue and delete each message only after it succeeds (B), so the queue durably holds work and failed messages retry. C keeps state in an in-memory text file, which is neither stateless nor durable. D adds an always-on EC2 instance to watch the queue. E only emails an owner instead of triggering processing.

SAA-C03 Question 19

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Topic 1 · Question 19

A company has a three-tier web application that is deployed on AWS. The web servers are deployed in a public subnet in a VPC. The application servers and database servers are deployed in private subnets in the same VPC. The company has deployed a third-party virtual firewall appliance from AWS Marketplace in an inspection VPC. The appliance is configured with an IP interface that can accept IP packets. A solutions architect needs to integrate the web application with the appliance to inspect all traffic to the application before the traffic reaches the web server. Which solution will meet these requirements with the LEAST operational overhead?

  • ACreate a Network Load Balancer in the public subnet of the application's VPC to route the traffic to the appliance for packet inspection.
  • BCreate an Application Load Balancer in the public subnet of the application's VPC to route the traffic to the appliance for packet inspection.
  • CDeploy a transit gateway in the inspection VPConfigure route tables to route the incoming packets through the transit gateway.
  • DDeploy a Gateway Load Balancer in the inspection VPC. Create a Gateway Load Balancer endpoint to receive the incoming packets and forward the packets to the appliance. (correct answer)
Reveal answer & explanation
Correct answer: D

Correct: D. A Gateway Load Balancer plus a GWLB endpoint transparently inserts the third-party firewall appliance into the traffic path at Layer 3, sending all packets through it for inspection with minimal effort — the purpose-built pattern for virtual appliances. A and B (NLB/ALB) balance application traffic but don't provide bump-in-the-wire inspection. C (transit gateway alone) routes between VPCs but doesn't insert the appliance this way.

SAA-C03 Question 20

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Topic 1 · Question 20

A company wants to improve its ability to clone large amounts of production data into a test environment in the same AWS Region. The data is stored in Amazon EC2 instances on Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volumes. Modifications to the cloned data must not affect the production environment. The software that accesses this data requires consistently high I/O performance. A solutions architect needs to minimize the time that is required to clone the production data into the test environment. Which solution will meet these requirements?

  • ATake EBS snapshots of the production EBS volumes. Restore the snapshots onto EC2 instance store volumes in the test environment.
  • BConfigure the production EBS volumes to use the EBS Multi-Attach feature. Take EBS snapshots of the production EBS volumes. Attach the production EBS volumes to the EC2 instances in the test environment.
  • CTake EBS snapshots of the production EBS volumes. Create and initialize new EBS volumes. Attach the new EBS volumes to EC2 instances in the test environment before restoring the volumes from the production EBS snapshots.
  • DTake EBS snapshots of the production EBS volumes. Turn on the EBS fast snapshot restore feature on the EBS snapshots. Restore the snapshots into new EBS volumes. Attach the new EBS volumes to EC2 instances in the test environment. (correct answer)
Reveal answer & explanation
Correct answer: D

Correct: D. Snapshot the production volumes, enable Fast Snapshot Restore, and create new volumes from the snapshots: FSR makes the restored volumes fully initialized so they deliver full I/O performance immediately, and the new volumes isolate test data from production. A (instance store) is ephemeral. B (Multi-Attach / attaching production volumes) would endanger production data. C restores without FSR, so volumes suffer first-access latency until every block is initialized.

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