Amazon Amazon Certifications SAA-C03 Questions & Answers

• Question 371:

  A company runs its critical database on an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance. The company wants to migrate to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL with minimal downtime and data loss. Which solution will meet these requirements with the LEAST operational overhead?

  A. Create a DB snapshot of the RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance to populate a new Aurora PostgreSQL DB cluster.

  B. Create an Aurora read replica of the RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance. Promote the Aurora read replicate to a new Aurora PostgreSQL DB cluster.

  C. Use data import from Amazon S3 to migrate the database to an Aurora PostgreSQL DB cluster.

  D. Use the pg_dump utility to back up the RDS for PostgreSQL database. Restore the backup to a new Aurora PostgreSQL DB cluster.

  Correct Answer: B

  Aurora read replicas allow setting up replication from RDS PostgreSQL to Aurora PostgreSQL with minimal downtime.

  Once replication is set up, the read replica can be promoted to a full standalone Aurora DB cluster with little to no downtime. This approach leverages AWS's managed replication between the source RDS PostgreSQL instance and Aurora. It

  avoids having to manually create backups and restore data. Using DB snapshots or pg_dump backups requires manually restoring data which increases downtime and operational overhead.

  Data import from S3 would require exporting, uploading and then importing data which adds overhead.

  https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide/AuroraPostgreSQL.Migrating.html

• Question 372:

  An ecommerce application uses a PostgreSQL database that runs on an Amazon EC2 instance. During a monthly sales event, database usage increases and causes database connection issues for the application. The traffic is unpredictable for subsequent monthly sales events, which impacts the sales forecast. The company needs to maintain performance when there is an unpredictable increase in traffic.

  Which solution resolves this issue in the MOST cost-effective way?

  A. Migrate the PostgreSQL database to Amazon Aurora Serverless v2.

  B. Enable auto scaling for the PostgreSQL database on the EC2 instance to accommodate increased usage.

  C. Migrate the PostgreSQL database to Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL with a larger instance type.

  D. Migrate the PostgreSQL database to Amazon Redshift to accommodate increased usage.

  Correct Answer: A

  Aurora Serverless v2 got autoscaling, highly available and cheaper when compared to the other options.

• Question 373:

  A company uses AWS and sells access to copyrighted images. The company's global customer base needs to be able to access these images quickly. The company must deny access to users from specific countries. The company wants to minimize costs as much as possible.

  Which solution will meet these requirements?

  A. Use Amazon S3 to store the images. Turn on multi-factor authentication (MFA) and public bucket access. Provide customers with a link to the S3 bucket.

  B. Use Amazon S3 to store the images. Create an IAM user for each customer. Add the users to a group that has permission to access the S3 bucket.

  C. Use Amazon EC2 instances that are behind Application Load Balancers (ALBs) to store the images. Deploy the instances only in the countries the company services. Provide customers with links to the ALBs for their specific country's instances.

  D. Use Amazon S3 to store the images. Use Amazon CloudFront to distribute the images with geographic restrictions. Provide a signed URL for each customer to access the data in CloudFront.

  Correct Answer: D

  Use Amazon S3 to store the images. Use Amazon CloudFront to distribute the images with geographic restrictions. Provide a signed URL for each customer to access the data in CloudFront.

• Question 374:

  A company runs a container application by using Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS). The application includes microservices that manage customers and place orders. The company needs to route incoming requests to the appropriate microservices.

  Which solution will meet this requirement MOST cost-effectively?

  A. Use the AWS Load Balancer Controller to provision a Network Load Balancer.

  B. Use the AWS Load Balancer Controller to provision an Application Load Balancer.

  C. Use an AWS Lambda function to connect the requests to Amazon EKS.

  D. Use Amazon API Gateway to connect the requests to Amazon EKS.

  Correct Answer: D

  API Gateway is a fully managed service that makes it easy for you to create, publish, maintain, monitor, and secure APIs at any scale. API Gateway provides an entry point to your microservices

• Question 375:

  A company plans to migrate to AWS and use Amazon EC2 On-Demand Instances for its application. During the migration testing phase, a technical team observes that the application takes a long time to launch and load memory to become fully productive.

  Which solution will reduce the launch time of the application during the next testing phase?

  A. Launch two or more EC2 On-Demand Instances. Turn on auto scaling features and make the EC2 On- Demand Instances available during the next testing phase.

  B. Launch EC2 Spot Instances to support the application and to scale the application so it is available during the next testing phase.

  C. Launch the EC2 On-Demand Instances with hibernation turned on. Configure EC2 Auto Scaling warm pools during the next testing phase.

  D. Launch EC2 On-Demand Instances with Capacity Reservations. Start additional EC2 instances during the next testing phase.

  Correct Answer: C

  Hibernation saves the in-memory state of the EC2 instance to persistent storage and shuts the instance down. When the instance is started again, the in-memory state is restored, which launches much faster than launching a new instance. Warm pools pre-initialize EC2 instances and keep them ready to fulfill requests, reducing launch time. The hibernated instances can be added to a warm pool. When auto scaling scales out during the next testing phase, it will be able to launch instances from the warm pool rapidly since they are already initialized

• Question 376:

  A solutions architect is designing a disaster recovery (DR) strategy to provide Amazon EC2 capacity in a failover AWS Region. Business requirements state that the DR strategy must meet capacity in the failover Region.

  Which solution will meet these requirements?

  A. Purchase On-Demand Instances in the failover Region.

  B. Purchase an EC2 Savings Plan in the failover Region.

  C. Purchase regional Reserved Instances in the failover Region.

  D. Purchase a Capacity Reservation in the failover Region.

  Correct Answer: D

  Capacity Reservations allocate EC2 capacity in a specific AWS Region for you to launch instances. The capacity is reserved and available to be utilized when needed, meeting the requirement to provide EC2 capacity in the failover region. Other options do not reserve capacity. On-Demand provides flexible capacity but does not reserve capacity upfront. Savings Plans and Reserved Instances provide discounts but do not reserve capacity. Capacity Reservations allow defining instance attributes like instance type, platform, Availability Zone so the reserved capacity matches the production environment.

• Question 377:

  A company runs a web application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer that has sticky sessions enabled. The web server currently hosts the user session state. The company wants to ensure high availability and avoid user session state loss in the event of a web server outage.

  Which solution will meet these requirements?

  A. Use an Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached instance to store the session data. Update the application to use ElastiCache for Memcached to store the session state.

  B. Use Amazon ElastiCache for Redis to store the session state. Update the application to use ElastiCache for Redis to store the session state.

  C. Use an AWS Storage Gateway cached volume to store session data. Update the application to use AWS Storage Gateway cached volume to store the session state.

  D. Use Amazon RDS to store the session state. Update the application to use Amazon RDS to store the session state.

  Correct Answer: B

  ElastiCache Redis provides in-memory caching that can deliver microsecond latency for session data. Redis supports replication and multi-AZ which can provide high availability for the cache. The application can be updated to store session

  data in ElastiCache Redis rather than locally on the web servers.

  If a web server fails, the user can be routed via the load balancer to another web server which can retrieve their session data from the highly available ElastiCache Redis cluster.

• Question 378:

  A company recently migrated to the AWS Cloud. The company wants a serverless solution for large-scale parallel on-demand processing of a semistructured dataset. The data consists of logs, media files, sales transactions, and IoT sensor data that is stored in Amazon S3. The company wants the solution to process thousands of items in the dataset in parallel.

  Which solution will meet these requirements with the MOST operational efficiency?

  A. Use the AWS Step Functions Map state in Inline mode to process the data in parallel.

  B. Use the AWS Step Functions Map state in Distributed mode to process the data in parallel.

  C. Use AWS Glue to process the data in parallel.

  D. Use several AWS Lambda functions to process the data in parallel.

  Correct Answer: B

  With Step Functions, you can orchestrate large-scale parallel workloads to perform tasks, such as on- demand processing of semi-structured data. These parallel workloads let you concurrently process large- scale data sources stored in Amazon S3. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/step-functions/latest/dg/concepts-orchestrate-large-scale-parallel- workloads.html

• Question 379:

  An ecommerce company wants a disaster recovery solution for its Amazon RDS DB instances that run Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise Edition. The company's current recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) are 24 hours.

  Which solution will meet these requirements MOST cost-effectively?

  A. Create a cross-Region read replica and promote the read replica to the primary instance.

  B. Use AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) to create RDS cross-Region replication.

  C. Use cross-Region replication every 24 hours to copy native backups to an Amazon S3 bucket.

  D. Copy automatic snapshots to another Region every 24 hours.

  Correct Answer: D

  This is the most cost-effective solution because it does not require any additional AWS services. Amazon RDS automatically creates snapshots of your DB instances every hour. You can copy these snapshots to another Region every 24 hours to meet your RPO and RTO requirements.

  The other solutions are more expensive because they require additional AWS services. For example, AWS DMS is a more expensive service than AWS RDS.

• Question 380:

  A company's infrastructure consists of hundreds of Amazon EC2 instances that use Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) storage. A solutions architect must ensure that every EC2 instance can be recovered after a disaster.

  What should the solutions architect do to meet this requirement with the LEAST amount of effort?

  A. Take a snapshot of the EBS storage that is attached to each EC2 instance. Create an AWS CloudFormation template to launch new EC2 instances from the EBS storage.

  B. Take a snapshot of the EBS storage that is attached to each EC2 instance. Use AWS Elastic Beanstalk to set the environment based on the EC2 template and attach the EBS storage.

  C. Use AWS Backup to set up a backup plan for the entire group of EC2 instances. Use the AWS Backup API or the AWS CLI to speed up the restore process for multiple EC2 instances.

  D. Create an AWS Lambda function to take a snapshot of the EBS storage that is attached to each EC2 instance and copy the Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). Create another Lambda function to perform the restores with the copied AMIs and attach the EBS storage.

  Correct Answer: C

  AWS Backup automates backup of resources like EBS volumes. It allows defining backup policies for groups of resources. This removes the need to manually create backups for each resource. The AWS Backup API and CLI allow programmatic control of backup plans and restores. This enables restoring hundreds of EC2 instances programmatically after a disaster instead of manually. AWS Backup handles cleanup of old backups based on policies to minimize storage costs.

  Going with Backup. Can restore programmatically using Backup API.