SAA-C03 practice questions with answers

Task 1.1 Design secure access to AWS resources

A company has an on-premise Active Directory (AD) that manages identities for its employees. They have recently begun leveraging AWS for their new cloud-native applications. The security team has specified that the company must maintain a single unified identity management system. They want to ensure that on-premise users can access AWS resources without requiring separate AWS IAM user accounts, and permissions should be managed centrally through AD groups. They will also need to share certain AWS resources within various departments using AWS accounts without replicating resources or compromising security controls. Given these criteria, which solution should the Solutions Architect recommend?

Task 1.2 Design secure workloads and applications

A company is hosting a high-profile web application on AWS which is expected to attract a large number of international users. The application is architected with an Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) in front of Amazon EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones. The IT Security Architect wants to ensure that the application is protected against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Which of the following services should the architect incorporate into the architecture to secure the application's external network connections while providing DDoS protection?

Task 1.3 Determine appropriate data security controls

You are designing a secure architecture for your company’s document management system on AWS. The system stores sensitive documents that must be backed up daily and retained for seven years for compliance reasons. The documents are stored on Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes attached to EC2 instances. You need to ensure that backups are automated and adhere to the company’s data retention policy. Which of the following would be the MOST efficient solution to automate the backup process while meeting the data retention requirements using Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager?

Task 2.1 Design scalable and loosely coupled architectures

A company with an international customer base is running a multi-tier web application on AWS, which includes web servers, application servers, and a MySQL database. The application experiences high latency and traffic congestion due to its global user base. The company's goal is to improve the application's performance and reduce the latency for its users worldwide without making changes to the application code or infrastructure. As an AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate, which AWS service would you recommend to reduce latency and improve overall performance by routing user traffic through the AWS global network infrastructure?

Task 2.2 Design highly available and/or fault-tolerant architectures

You are a Solutions Architect tasked with improving the reliability of a legacy database application that must remain operational 24/7. This application is currently running on-premises and is not designed for horizontal scaling or redundancy. The company wants to minimize downtime and improve disaster recovery capabilities without making any modifications to the application code. Which of the following strategies would best utilize AWS services to meet these requirements?

Task 3.1 Determine high-performing and/or scalable storage solutions

A company is developing a new web application that will be deployed on AWS. The application requires a shared file system that can automatically scale as the number of application instances increases due to user demand. The file system must also support a POSIX-compliant file system interface to allow their existing on-premises applications to integrate seamlessly without code modifications. Which AWS storage service should the Solutions Architect recommend?

Task 3.2 Design high-performing and elastic compute solutions

A company is hosting a web application on AWS, which experiences predictable traffic patterns. Traffic peaks on the weekends, with very minimal usage during weekdays. The application is currently deployed on a set of t2.large EC2 instances which are underutilized during weekdays resulting in cost inefficiencies. The Solutions Architect has been assigned to optimize this scenario by implementing EC2 Auto Scaling. Which of the following strategies should the Architect recommend to meet the business requirement of cost-saving while maintaining performance?

Task 3.4 Determine high-performing and/or scalable network architectures

A company has expanded its operations from a single AWS region to multiple AWS regions around the globe. They require a network infrastructure that allows for secure, efficient, and easy communication between their Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) in different regions without the complexity of managing individual VPC peering connections. Additionally, they need the ability to enforce consistent security policies across all VPCs and connect on-premises data centers to their cloud resources. Which AWS service would most appropriately fulfill these business requirements?

Task 3.5 Determine high-performing data ingestion and transformation solutions

A Solutions Architect is designing a data lake solution where numerous CSV files are frequently uploaded to an Amazon S3 bucket. The data analytics team has requested to have these files converted to the Parquet format for more efficient querying with Amazon Athena. The data must be transformed automatically upon upload, with minimal development effort. Which AWS service should the architect use to meet these requirements?

Task 4.1 Design cost-optimized storage solutions

A company has recently transitioned to AWS, but still maintains a significant amount of on-premises data, generating about 1 TB of new data each month. This data is rarely accessed, but must be preserved for regulatory reasons. The company needs a cost-effective solution that allows them to store their on-premises backup data on AWS, while ensuring that the data is readily accessible when needed for compliance. Which AWS service should they use to meet these requirements?

Task 4.2 Design cost-optimized compute solutions

A company is running a memory-intensive application on Amazon EC2 instances and has recognized a consistent compute usage pattern over a long period. The application requires instances with high memory to compute ratio and predictable performance. The company would like to reduce their AWS bill and is considering EC2 Savings Plans. Which EC2 instance family should the company choose to optimize costs while selecting an EC2 Savings Plans for their workload?

Task 4.3 Design cost-optimized database solutions

A company is collecting time-series data from thousands of IoT sensors distributed globally. The data consists of high volume temperature and humidity readings recorded every minute. The company needs a cost-effective database service that can handle the high ingestion rates and provide fast, scalable queries for real-time analytics. Which AWS database service would be most cost-effective and appropriate for this use case?