AWS SAA-C03 - Practice Test #5

Question 1

A company processes massive CSV files deposited into Amazon S3 every early morning. They have a Python script in a Docker image that downloads, transforms, and loads (ETL) this data into Amazon Redshift. The process takes about 45 minutes daily and does not run the rest of the day. The data team has no server administration experience. Which configuration will meet these requirements with the LEAST operational overhead?

Accepted Answer

Run the Docker image as an Amazon ECS task on AWS Fargate, scheduled via Amazon EventBridge.

Answer

Deploy the Docker image on AWS Lambda and configure an Amazon EventBridge cron rule to invoke it.

Answer

Create an Auto Scaling group of Amazon EC2 instances that spins up at night, runs a User Data script, and terminates the instance.

Answer

Deploy the container in an AWS Elastic Beanstalk Worker Environment.

Question 2

A Machine Learning research platform ingests millions of images into Amazon S3. Data scientists intensely process these images during the first 3 to 4 weeks. After this time, access becomes sporadic and unpredictable: some images are never touched again, but others are suddenly queried to retrain models. Data must be kept for 5 years. Which configuration MINIMIZES long-term storage costs?

Accepted Answer

Store the objects in the S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage class and opt-in to the Archive Access and Deep Archive Access tiers.

Answer

Configure an S3 Lifecycle Rule to move objects to S3 Standard-IA at 30 days, and then to S3 Glacier Deep Archive at 90 days.

Answer

Move all data to Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval from day one to reduce the baseline cost.

Answer

Use S3 Standard and configure a lifecycle policy that deletes old versions of the objects every 30 days.

Question 3

A mobile banking application runs on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The instances are configured in an Auto Scaling Group operating in the us-east-1a Availability Zone. Recent metrics show that during hardware failures in the AWS data center, the service suffers outages of up to 30 minutes. Which design guarantees HIGH AVAILABILITY against the failure of an Availability Zone (AZ)?

Accepted Answer

Update the Auto Scaling Group configuration to span at least two Availability Zones (e.g., us-east-1a and us-east-1b) and configure the ALB to target both subnets.

Answer

Create a second Application Load Balancer in the us-west-1 region and use Amazon Route 53 with Failover routing.

Answer

Place the EC2 instances in a Spread Placement Group within the same AZ to minimize the risk of rack failures.

Answer

Enable the EC2 Auto Recovery feature to automatically reboot faulty instances on the same hardware host.

Question 4

A streaming platform receives user analytics events via a REST API. These events are channeled through Amazon Kinesis Data Streams. On a standard day, throughput is 100 records per second. However, upon releasing the finale of a highly popular series, the stream jumps to over 50,000 records per second within minutes. The API producers start receiving 'ProvisionedThroughputExceededException' errors. How can unpredictable traffic spikes be handled most efficiently?

Accepted Answer

Modify the Amazon Kinesis stream to On-Demand capacity mode.

Answer

Configure an AWS Lambda script to monitor metrics and call the 'UpdateShardCount' API to scale Kinesis shards.

Answer

Migrate the ingestion data to an Amazon SNS topic and use multiple SQS queues as subscribers.

Answer

Interleave an Amazon ElastiCache (Redis) cluster to absorb the analytics burst before sending to Kinesis.

Question 5

A company ('Company A') stores customer call recordings in a protected S3 bucket. They have subcontracted an analysis center ('Company B') to perform transcriptions using their own algorithms. 'Company B's application needs programmatic access to this bucket. To avoid security risks, the CISO demands that no static credentials be shared and that Company B's software be prevented from confusing this access with other clients. How can secure and auditable access be ensured for third parties?

Accepted Answer

Create an IAM Role in Company A's account, allow Company B to assume the role, and configure a mandatory 'ExternalId' in the trust policy.

Answer

Create an IAM User in Company A's account, generate Access Keys, and share them via AWS Secrets Manager with Company B.

Answer

Enable VPC Peering between both AWS accounts and apply a Security Group on S3 allowing only Company B's IP.

Answer

Add a bucket policy to Company A's S3 bucket allowing public read access, but restricting it using the 'aws:SourceIp' condition.

Question 6

A banking institution has its primary transaction database operating on Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL in the ap-northeast-1 (Tokyo) region. Management requires implementing a Disaster Recovery (DR) plan meeting strict government regulations: if an earthquake destroys the entire Tokyo region, the system must operate from ap-southeast-1 (Singapore) with near-zero data loss (RPO < 1 second) and restart in minutes (RTO < 1 minute). Choose TWO options that, together, form this architecture. Which architecture is the MOST RESILIENT against a Region-level disaster?

Accepted Answer

Answer

Configure Amazon Route 53 with a Failover Routing Policy based on Health Checks.

Answer

Create an Amazon Aurora Global Database setting Singapore as the secondary region.

Answer

Enable Aurora automated backups and integrate them with AWS Backup for Cross-Region Copy every minute.

Answer

Deploy Amazon RDS Multi-AZ and stretch the synchronous cluster so the Standby instance resides in Singapore.

Answer

Create an Amazon DynamoDB Global Tables database to actively replicate the relational schema.

Question 7

A global e-sports service hosts multiplayer match servers on EC2 instances in the us-west-2 region. The game uses a custom UDP protocol. European players are experiencing high 'jitter' (latency fluctuation) and disconnects because their network traffic transits multiple ISPs on the public internet before reaching AWS. Which configuration will provide the LOWEST latency for global users ensuring network stability?

Accepted Answer

Create an AWS Global Accelerator accelerator and configure the us-west-2 EC2 instances as an Endpoint Group.

Answer

Deploy an Amazon CloudFront distribution with the EC2 instances configured as its Custom Origin.

Answer

Configure Amazon Route 53 with a Latency-based Routing policy pointing to the EC2 server.

Answer

Establish a global AWS Transit Gateway network architecture to route player traffic directly.

Question 8

An application processes medical images hosted on Amazon EC2 within private subnets. After processing, the instances must upload the results to an Amazon S3 bucket. Per security policy, this medical data traffic cannot transit through public network infrastructure. The current network has a NAT Gateway. Which solution guarantees that data NEVER traverses the public internet?

Accepted Answer

Create a Gateway VPC Endpoint for Amazon S3 and add its corresponding route to the private subnet's route table.

Answer

Keep the current configuration; the NAT Gateway already ensures encrypted traffic flows to S3.

Answer

Enable an IPSec VPN connection between the Virtual Private Gateway (VGW) of the VPC and the S3 bucket.

Answer

Configure an Egress-Only Internet Gateway in the private subnet and remove the NAT Gateway.

Question 9

A corporation recently migrated its EC2-based monolithic application to a microservices architecture hosted on AWS Fargate. However, they maintain a dozen EC2 M5 instances processing queues in a stable 24/7/365 production environment. The CIO wants to reduce operational spend to the maximum. Which instance purchasing strategy minimizes costs for constant workloads considering this mix of EC2 and serverless containers?

Accepted Answer

Purchase a Compute Savings Plan for a 1 or 3-year term.

Answer

Purchase Standard Reserved Instances (Standard RIs) for the M5 family and provision AWS Fargate Spot.

Answer

Purchase 3-year Convertible Reserved Instances (Convertible RIs) to apply them to both EC2 and Fargate usage.

Answer

Purchase an EC2 Instance Savings Plan assigned to the M5 family and corresponding region.

Question 10

An insurer's on-premises data center will be demolished in 4 weeks. They operate 100 virtual machines with Windows Server and MS SQL Server databases, whose configurations are fragile and unmodifiable because the original developers left the company. The business demands everything be moved to the cloud immediately without changing the application's local IP addresses and minimizing downtime during migration. Which is the FASTEST way to implement this solution?

Accepted Answer

Install AWS Application Migration Service (AWS MGN) agents on the servers to replicate the volumes to Amazon EC2 continuously and automatically.

Answer

Export the 100 machines as OVA images, use AWS VM Import/Export to create AMIs, and launch them in a VPC.

Answer

Configure AWS DataSync tasks to move the VM disks to Amazon S3 and rebuild the application on AWS Elastic Beanstalk.

Answer

Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) to move the databases to Amazon RDS and refactor the web servers to AWS Lambda.