AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate SAA-C03 Exam Questions and Answers - Page 55 (2023)

The latest AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate SAA-C03 certification practical exam real questions (Q&A) dump is provided free of charge to help you pass the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate SAA-C03 exam and obtain the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Assistant SAA-C03 certification.

Question 1261

test questions

A company needs guaranteed Amazon EC2 capacity in three specific Availability Zones in a specific AWS Region for an upcoming event lasting 1 week.

What should the company do to guarantee the capacity of EC2?

A. Purchase a Reserved Instance specifying the desired region.
B. Create an On-Demand Capacity Reservation specifying the desired region.
C. Purchase Reserved Instances in the specified region and the required three Availability Zones.
D. Create an On-Demand Capacity Reservation specifying the desired region and three Availability Zones.

correct answer

D. Create an On-Demand Capacity Reservation specifying the desired region and three Availability Zones.

explain

To guarantee Amazon EC2 capacity in three specific Availability Zones in a specific AWS Region for an upcoming event lasting 1 week, a company should choose option D: Create an On-Demand Capacity Reservation specifying the region and three Availability Zones required.

Here's why option D is the correct choice:

1. On-Demand Capacity Reservation: A Capacity Reservation allows you to reserve capacity for your EC2 instances in a specific Availability Zone within a region. By creating an On-Demand Capacity Reservation, companies can guarantee the availability of EC2 instances in desired Availability Zones during an event.
2. Region and Availability Zone Specification: This requirement states that the company needs to guarantee EC2 capacity in three specific Availability Zones within a specific region. By creating an On-Demand Capacity Reservation, companies can specify desired regions and three specific Availability Zones to ensure capacity is reserved where desired.
3. Flexibility and Control: Capacity Reservations provide companies with flexibility and control over their EC2 capacity. They can choose the instance type, tenancy, and other configuration options for reserved capacity.

1 week duration: Requirements specify that the event will last for 1 week. With On-Demand Capacity Reservation, companies can reserve capacity for the exact duration needed, ensuring it is available throughout the duration of the event.

In summary, in order to guarantee EC2 capacity in three specific Availability Zones in a specific AWS Region for a week-long event, a company should create an On-Demand Capacity Reservation specifying the desired Region and three Availability Zones. This provides the required capacity, positional control and flexibility for events.

Question 1262

test questions

A company develops a microservice application. It uses a client-facing API and Amazon API Gateway along with several internal services hosted on Amazon EC2 instances to handle user requests. APIs are designed to support unpredictable traffic spikes, but during surges, internal services can become overwhelmed and unresponsive for a period of time. Solution architects need to design a more reliable solution that reduces errors when internal services become unresponsive or unavailable.

Which solution meets these requirements?

A. Use AWS Auto Scaling to scale internal services when traffic spikes.
B. Use a different Availability Zone to host internal services. Send notifications to system administrators when internal services become unresponsive.
C. Use an Elastic Load Balancer to distribute traffic between internal services. Configure Amazon CloudWatch metrics to monitor traffic to internal services.
D. Use Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) to store user requests as they arrive. Change the internal service to retrieve requests from the queue for processing.

correct answer

D. Use Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) to store user requests as they arrive. Change the internal service to retrieve requests from the queue for processing.

explain

To design a more reliable solution for microservice applications, reducing errors when internal services become unresponsive or unavailable, the recommended solutions are:

D. Use Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) to store user requests as they arrive. Change the internal service to retrieve requests from the queue for processing.

Here's why option D is the correct choice:

1. Amazon SQS for Reliable Message Queuing: Amazon SQS provides a fully managed message queuing service that separates client-facing APIs from internal services. By using SQS to store incoming user requests, applications can ensure reliable messaging and persistence. SQS ensures that messages are stored redundantly so that they are not lost even if internal services become overwhelmed or unresponsive.
2. Asynchronous processing and fault tolerance: By decoupling client requests from internal services, applications can take advantage of the asynchronous nature of SQS. Client-facing APIs can quickly add messages to queues and return responses to clients without waiting for internal services to process requests immediately. This allows for fault tolerance and resiliency against temporary unavailability or overload of internal services.
3. Scalability and load balancing: Client-facing APIs can handle unpredictable traffic surges without overwhelming internal services. Internal services can retrieve messages from the SQS queue at their own pace, allowing for better scalability and load balancing. This helps prevent internal services from being overwhelmed during traffic spikes.
4. Visibility and Monitoring: Amazon SQS integrates with Amazon CloudWatch, allowing you to monitor queue metrics and set alarms based on queue depth or other metrics. This provides a better understanding of the message processing flow and helps detect and resolve any potential bottlenecks or problems.

In summary, using Amazon SQS to store user requests and having an internal service retrieve messages from the queue provides a more reliable and fault-tolerant solution. It decouples the client-facing API from internal services, allowing for asynchronous processing, scalability, and load balancing. Additionally, integration with CloudWatch provides monitoring capabilities to ensure system health and performance.

Question 1263

test questions

A company has a service that generates event data. The company wanted to use AWS to process incoming event data. Data is written in a specific order that must be maintained throughout processing. The company wanted to implement a solution that minimized operational overhead.

How should a solution architect achieve this?

A. Create an Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) FIFO queue to hold messages. Set up an AWS Lambda function to process messages from the queue.
B. Create an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic to deliver notifications with the payload to process. Configure an AWS Lambda function as a subscriber.
C. Create an Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) standard queue to hold messages. Set up an AWS Lambda function to independently process messages from a queue.
D. Create an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic to deliver notifications with the payload to process. Configure an Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) queue as a subscriber.

correct answer

C. Create an Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) standard queue to hold messages. Set up an AWS Lambda function to independently process messages from a queue.

explain

To process event data in a specific order while minimizing operational overhead, the recommended solution is:

C. Create an Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) standard queue to hold messages. Set up an AWS Lambda function to independently process messages from a queue.

This is why option C is the correct choice:

1. Amazon SQS standard queues: By using SQS standard queues, messages are processed independently, allowing parallel processing. Standard queues provide at-least-once delivery, ensuring that messages are not lost. However, the order of message processing is not guaranteed, which is consistent with minimizing operational overhead.
2. AWS Lambda function for message processing: Set up an AWS Lambda function to process messages retrieved from an SQS queue. AWS Lambda provides a serverless environment that automatically scales based on incoming message load, reducing operational overhead. Each Lambda function can process only one message at a time, ensuring that processing is independent and scalable.
3. Message ordering: While SQS standard queues do not guarantee the order in which messages are processed, if maintaining order is critical, Lambda functions can handle the ordering logic by leveraging message properties or metadata. Lambda functions can process and sequence messages in the desired order before performing actual processing.
4. Minimize operational overhead: With this solution, you can leverage fully managed services (SQS and Lambda) provided by AWS to process event data. You don't need to manage or configure any infrastructure, reducing operational overhead. Lambda's auto-scaling feature ensures that the system can efficiently handle varying workloads.

In summary, by using SQS standard queues and AWS Lambda functions, you can process event data while maintaining scalability, flexibility, and minimizing operational overhead. Although SQS does not guarantee the order in which messages are processed, you can implement ordering logic in Lambda functions if desired.

Question 1264

test questions

A company hosts 60 TB of production-grade data in an Amazon S3 bucket. Solution Architects need to bring this data on-premises to meet quarterly audit requirements. This data export must be encrypted during transmission. The company had low network bandwidth between AWS and its on-premises data centers.

What should a solution architect do to meet these requirements?

A. Deploy AWS Migration Hub with a 90-day data transfer replication window.
B. Deploy an AWS Storage Gateway volume gateway on AWS. Enables a 90-day replication window to transfer data.
C. Deploy Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) with lifecycle policies enabled on AWS. Use it to transfer data.
D. After completing the export job request in the AWS Snowball console, deploy the AWS Snowball device in the on-premises data center.

correct answer

D. After completing the export job request in the AWS Snowball console, deploy the AWS Snowball device in the on-premises data center.

explain

To meet the requirement of securely transferring 60TB of data from an Amazon S3 bucket to an on-premises data center with low network bandwidth, the most suitable solutions are:

D. After completing the export job request in the AWS Snowball console, deploy the AWS Snowball device in the on-premises data center.

Here's why option D is the correct choice:

1. AWS Snowball: AWS Snowball is a service that allows secure and efficient transfer of data between AWS and on-premises environments. It is designed to handle large data transfers and is ideal for transferring 60 TB of data. Snowball devices are rugged, portable storage devices that can be shipped to your location.
2. Secure Data Transfer: Snowball devices encrypt data at rest using AES-256 encryption and provide a tamper-resistant seal to ensure data integrity. Additionally, Snowball supports encryption in transit, so you can securely transfer data from your Snowball device to your on-premises data center using an encrypted connection.
3. Low network bandwidth: Due to the low bandwidth of the corporate network, using Snowball is an efficient solution. Instead of relying on the network for data transfer, Snowball enables you to physically ship the device to your location, avoiding the limitations of slow networks and reducing the time it takes for transfers.
4. AWS Snowball Console: By completing an export job request in the AWS Snowball console, you can specify the data to export from an Amazon S3 bucket and generate the job. AWS then does the work and loads the data onto the Snowball device for secure transfer to your on-premises data center.

In summary, deploying an AWS Snowball device after completing an export job request in the AWS Snowball console provides a safe and efficient way to transfer 60 TB of data from an Amazon S3 bucket to an on-premises data center, even with low network bandwidth. The Snowball device can Ensure data encryption and integrity while minimizing impact on limited network resources.

Question 1265

test questions

A company has an application that uses Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) to store data. These files are 1 GB or larger in size and are usually only accessed for the first few days after creation. Application data is shared among Linux server clusters. A company wants to reduce storage costs for applications.

What should a solution architect do to meet these requirements?

A. Implement Amazon FSx and mount a network drive on each server.
B. Transfer charges from Amazon EFS to on-premises and store on each Amazon EC2 instance.
C. Configure a lifecycle policy to move files to the EFS Infrequent Access (IA) swage class after 7 days.
D. Move the file to Amazon S3 with the S3 lifecycle policy enabled. Rewrite the application to support mounting S3 buckets.

correct answer

C. Configure a lifecycle policy to move files to the EFS Infrequent Access (IA) swage class after 7 days.

explain

To meet the needs of applications using Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) to optimize file access patterns while reducing storage costs, the most suitable solutions are:

C. Configure a lifecycle policy to move files to the EFS Infrequent Access (IA) storage class after 7 days.

This is why option C is the correct choice:

1. Amazon EFS Infrequent Access (IA): Amazon EFS offers the Infrequent Access storage class, which provides low-cost storage for infrequently accessed files. By configuring a lifecycle policy, you can automatically transition files to the IA storage class after a specified duration (7 days in this example).
2. File Access Patterns: Ask to indicate that files are only frequently accessed during the first few days after creation. By converting files to the IA storage class after 7 days, you can take advantage of reduced storage costs while still maintaining accessibility during the initial period of high usage.
3. Share EFS Across Linux Servers: Amazon EFS allows file sharing between multiple Linux servers in a cluster. By utilizing the IA storage class, you can optimize the storage cost of shared files without sacrificing the ability to access them from the cluster.

In summary, configuring a lifecycle policy to move files in Amazon EFS to the Infrequently Accessed (IA) storage class after 7 days allows you to reduce storage costs while still adapting to your application's access patterns. The solution provides an efficient and cost-effective way to manage application data stored in Amazon EFS.

Question 1266

test questions

A company uses Amazon S3 to store its confidential audit documents. The S3 bucket uses bucket policies to restrict access to the audit team IAM user credentials based on the principle of least privilege. Company managers are worried that documents in the S3 storage bucket will be deleted by mistake, and hope for a more secure solution.

How should a solution architect protect audit documentation?

A. Enable versioning and MFA removal on the S3 bucket.
B. Enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) on the IAM user credentials for each audit team IAM user account.
C. Add the S3 lifecycle policy to the audit team's IAM user account to deny the s3:DeleteObject operation during the audit.
D. Use AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) to encrypt the S3 bucket and restrict the audit team IAM user account from accessing the KMS key.

correct answer

A. Enable versioning and MFA removal on the S3 bucket.

explain

To protect audit documents stored in Amazon S3 buckets and prevent accidental deletion, the recommended solutions are:

A. Enable versioning and MFA removal on the S3 bucket.

This is why option A is the correct choice:

1. Versioning: By enabling versioning on an S3 bucket, each new version of an object will be stored and assigned a unique version ID. This ensures that previous versions of objects are preserved even if newer versions are uploaded or overwritten.
2. MFA delete: Enabling MFA delete adds an extra layer of security by requiring multi-factor authentication (MFA) for certain high-risk operations, such as deleting objects from an S3 bucket. MFA adds an additional level of protection against accidental or unauthorized deletion by requiring a physical token or virtual device in addition to IAM user credentials.

By combining version control and MFA Delete, you can implement a more secure solution for audit documents stored in S3 buckets. This ensures that previous versions of documents are preserved and protected from accidental or malicious deletion. It provides an extra layer of protection while still allowing authorized users with the necessary MFA credentials to perform deletions if required.

Options B, C, and D do not directly address the accidental deletion of documents, nor do they provide the same level of protection as enabling versioning and MFA deletion on the S3 bucket.

Question 1267

test questions

A company is running a multi-tier e-commerce web application in the AWS cloud. The application runs on an Amazon EC2 instance with an Amazon RDS MySQL Multi-AZ DB instance. Amazon RDS is a latest-generation instance provisioned with 2,000 GB of storage on an Amazon EBS General Purpose SSD (gp2) volume. Database performance can impact applications during periods of high demand. After analyzing the logs in Amazon CloudWatch Logs, a database administrator found that when the number of read and write IOPS was higher than 6.000, the application performance always decreased.

How should a solution architect improve application performance?

A. Replace the volume with a magnetic volume.
B. Increase the number of IOPS on the gp2 volume.
C. Replace the volume with a Provisioned IOPS (PIOPS) volume.
D. Replace the 2,000 GB gp2 volume with two 1,000 GBgp2 volumes.

correct answer

C. Replace the volume with a Provisioned IOPS (PIOPS) volume.

explain

In order to improve application performance in this scenario, the recommended solutions are:

C. Replace the volume with a Provisioned IOPS (PIOPS) volume.

This is why option C is the correct choice:

Application performance degrades when the number of read and write IOPS exceeds 6,000. This indicates that current general purpose SSD (gp2) volumes may not be able to sustain the IOPS required by the workload.

Provisioned IOPS (PIOPS) volumes are designed to provide predictable and consistent performance for database workloads. By replacing existing gp2 volumes with PIOPS volumes, you can allocate a specific number of IOPS based on workload requirements. This ensures that the database has enough IOPS to handle periods of high demand without performance degradation.

To implement this solution, you need to:

1. Create a new PIOPS volume with the desired size and the necessary number of Provisioned IOPS to meet the workload requirements.
2. Take a snapshot of an existing RDS MySQL Multi-AZ DB instance.
3. Restore the snapshot to a new DB instance and specify the newly created PIOPS volume as the storage option.
4. Update the application configuration to point to the new database instance.

By using PIOPS volumes, you can provide the necessary performance to handle periods of high demand and improve the overall performance of your application.

Options A and B are not suitable because replacing the gp2 volume with a magnetic volume (option A) may result in lower performance, and increasing the number of IOPS on the gp2 volume (option B) may not provide sustained performance beyond the limits of GP2.

Option D, splitting the volume into two separate gp2 volumes, did not address the performance degradation due to high IOPS. It only provides additional storage space without improving the underlying performance characteristics.

Question 1268

test questions

A solutions architect is using Amazon API Gateway to design a new API that will receive requests from users. Request volume is highly variable; no requests are received for hours. Data processing will happen asynchronously, but should complete within seconds of the request being made.

Which computing service should a solution architect make API calls to deliver the requirements at the lowest cost?

A. AWS Glue jobs
B. An AWS Lambda function
C. Containerized Services Hosted in Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS)
D. Containerized services hosted in Amazon ECS using Amazon EC2

correct answer

B. An AWS Lambda function

explain

The most appropriate computing services to deliver the requirements at the lowest cost in this scenario are:

B. AWS Lambda functions.

This is why option B is the correct choice:

AWS Lambda is a serverless computing service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. It is designed to handle variable workloads, scale automatically, and execute code in a highly available and fault-tolerant manner. Lambda functions are well suited for asynchronous and event-driven workloads, making them a good fit for a given requirement.

By invoking AWS Lambda functions from Amazon API Gateway, you can get the following benefits:

1. Scale on demand: Lambda automatically scales to handle concurrent requests as they arrive, ensuring requests are processed within seconds of being sent. Idle resources incur no cost when there are no requests.
2. Cost Efficiency: With Lambda, you only pay for the actual compute time your function consumes, measured in milliseconds. This pay-per-use model ensures that costs are directly aligned with actual workload.
3. Simplified management: Lambda takes care of server and infrastructure management, allowing you to focus on developing and deploying code. You don't need to configure or manage any servers or containers.

Options A, C, and D involve more traditional computing services that require infrastructure provisioning and management. For highly variable workloads, they may not provide the same level of cost-effectiveness and ease of scalability as AWS Lambda.

Therefore, choosing AWS Lambda as the compute service to handle API requests would meet the requirements at the lowest cost while providing the necessary scalability and simplicity.

Question 1269

test questions

A company wants to build an online marketplace application on AWS as a set of loosely coupled microservices. For this application, when a customer submits a new order, both microservices should handle the event concurrently. The Email microservice will send the confirmation email, and the OrderProcessing microservice will start the order delivery process. If the customer cancels the order, the OrderCancelation and Email microservices should handle the event at the same time. A solution architect wants to design messaging between microservices using Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) and Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS).

How should a solution architect design a solution?

A. Create a single SQS queue and publish order events to it. The Email OrderProcessing and Order Cancellation microservices can then consume messages from the queue.
B. Create three SNS topics for each microservice. Publish order events to three topics. Subscribe each of the Email OrderProcessing and Order Cancellation microservices to their respective topics.
C. Create an SNS topic and publish order events to it. Create three SQS queues for the email order processing and order cancellation microservices. Subscribe all SQS queues to an SNS topic with message filtering.
D. Create two SQS queues and publish order events to the two queues at the same time. One queue is used for email and order processing microservices. The second queue is used for email and order cancellation microservices.

correct answer

C. Create an SNS topic and publish order events to it. Create three SQS queues for the email order processing and order cancellation microservices. Subscribe all SQS queues to an SNS topic with message filtering.

explain

The design that best suits the given requirements is:

C. Create an SNS topic and publish order events to it. Create three SQS queues for the email, order processing, and order cancellation microservices. Subscribe all SQS queues to an SNS topic with message filtering.

This is why option C is the correct choice:

To enable multiple microservices to process order events concurrently, you can use Amazon SNS with Amazon SQS. Amazon SNS provides publish/subscribe messaging, while Amazon SQS provides a reliable and scalable message queue.

In this scenario, you can design the following solutions:

1. Create SNS Topic: Set up a single SNS topic to publish order events. SNS topics act as a central hub for distributing messages to multiple subscribers.
2. Create SQS queues: Set up three SQS queues, one for each microservice (email, order processing, and order cancellation). Each microservice has its own dedicated queue to consume messages.
3. Subscribe SQS queues to SNS topics: Subscribe each of the three SQS queues to SNS topics. This allows the queue to receive messages published to SNS topics.
4. Implement message filtering: Configure message filtering on the SNS topic so that each microservice only receives relevant messages based on message attributes. For example, the Email microservice will receive order confirmation messages, the OrderProcessing microservice will receive all order events, and the Order Cancellation microservice will receive order cancellation messages.

By using this design, when a customer submits a new order, an order event will be published to the SNS topic. The Email and OrderProcessing microservices will each receive related messages via their respective SQS queues and can process them concurrently. Likewise, when an order is canceled, the order cancellation and email microservices will receive corresponding messages.

Option C provides the necessary decoupling between microservices, ensuring that they can consume and process messages from SNS topics independently. It allows multiple microservices to process events in parallel, enabling order events to be processed concurrently as needed.

Question 1270

test questions

A company hosts its application in the AWS cloud. The application runs on Amazon EC2 instances behind an elastic load balancer in an Auto Scaling group with an Amazon DynamoDB table. The company wanted to ensure that the application was available in another AWS Region with minimal downtime.

What should a solution architect do to meet these requirements with minimal downtime?

A. Create an Auto Scaling group and a load balancer in the DR region. Configure the DynamoDB table as a global table. Configure DNS failover to point to the load balancer in the new disaster recovery region.
B. Create an AWS CloudFormation template to create EC2 instances, load balancers, and DynamoDB tables to execute when needed. Configure DNS failover to point to the load balancer in the new disaster recovery region.
C. Create an AWS CloudFormation template to create EC2 instances and a load balancer to execute if needed. Configure the DynamoDB table as a global table. Configure DNS failover to point to the load balancer in the new disaster recovery region.
D. Create an Auto Scaling group and load balancer in the disaster recovery region. Configure the DynamoDB table as a global table. Create an Amazon CloudWatch alarm to trigger an AWS Lambda function that updates Amazon Route 53 pointing to the disaster recovery load balancer.

correct answer

D. Create an Auto Scaling group and load balancer in the disaster recovery region. Configure the DynamoDB table as a global table. Create an Amazon CloudWatch alarm to trigger an AWS Lambda function that updates Amazon Route 53 pointing to the disaster recovery load balancer.

explain

To achieve the goal of making the application available in another AWS Region with minimal downtime, the most appropriate solutions are:

D. Create an Auto Scaling group and load balancer in the disaster recovery region. Configure the DynamoDB table as a global table. Create an Amazon CloudWatch alarm to trigger an AWS Lambda function that updates Amazon Route 53 pointing to the disaster recovery load balancer.

Here's why option D is the correct choice:

1. Create an Auto Scaling group and load balancer in the DR region: Set up an Auto Scaling group with Amazon EC2 instances and an Elastic Load Balancer in the DR region. This allows for scalability and traffic distribution across multiple instances.
2. Configure DynamoDB table as a global table: Configure an existing DynamoDB table as a global table. This enables automatic replication of tables to multiple AWS Regions, including disaster recovery regions. It ensures data consistency and availability across regions.
3. Create an Amazon CloudWatch alarm: Set up an Amazon CloudWatch alarm to monitor the health of the application in the primary region. This alert should detect any outages or failures in the main zone.
4. Trigger an AWS Lambda function to update Amazon Route 53: Configure a CloudWatch alarm to trigger an AWS Lambda function when an alarm state is reached. This Lambda function should update the DNS configuration in Amazon Route 53 to point to the load balancer in the disaster recovery region.

By taking this approach, the application can be available in another AWS Region with minimal downtime:

• In normal operation, the application runs in the primary region, serving traffic through the load balancer and accessing DynamoDB tables in the same region.
• If a CloudWatch alarm detects a failure or outage in the primary region, a Lambda function is triggered to update the DNS configuration in Route 53. This update redirects traffic to the load balancer in the disaster recovery region.
• Through DNS updates, traffic is seamlessly routed to the application in the disaster recovery region, which utilizes replicated DynamoDB tables to ensure data availability.

Option D provides a comprehensive approach using Auto Scaling, load balancing, global DynamoDB tables, and DNS failover. It ensures minimal downtime during failover and enables applications to be available in another AWS Region if needed.