Amazon SAA-C03 Online Practice Questions and Exam Preparation

Amazon SAA-C03 Online Questions & Answers

• Question 41:

  A company runs an online order management system on AWS. The company stores order and inventory data for the previous 5 years in an Amazon Aurora MySQL database. The company deletes inventory data after 5 years.

  The company wants to optimize costs to archive data.

  Which solution will meet these requirements?

  A. Create an AWS Glue crawler to export data to Amazon S3. Create an AWS Lambda function to compress the data.
  B. Use the SELECT INTO OUTFILE S3 query on the Aurora database to export the data to Amazon S3. Configure S3 Lifecycle rules on the S3 bucket.
  C. Create an AWS Glue DataBrew Job to migrate data from Aurora to Amazon S3. Configure S3 Lifecycle rules on the S3 bucket.
  D. Use the AWS Schema Conversion Tool (AWS SCT) to replicate data from Aurora to Amazon S3. Use the S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) storage class.
  B. Use the SELECT INTO OUTFILE S3 query on the Aurora database to export the data to Amazon S3. Configure S3 Lifecycle rules on the S3 bucket.

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  Explanation

  The SELECT INTO OUTFILE S3 feature allows you to export Amazon Aurora MySQL data directly to Amazon S3 with minimal operational overhead. This method is efficient and cost-effective for archiving historical data.

  You can configure S3 Lifecycle rules to transition the exported data to lower-cost storage (e.g., S3 Glacier or S3 Standard-IA) and eventually delete it after 5 years.

  No need for additional ETL tools like Glue or DataBrew unless complex transformations are required.

  References:

  Exporting data from Aurora MySQL to S3

• Question 42:

  A company has a new mobile app. Anywhere in the world, users can see local news on topics they choose. Users also can post photos and videos from inside the app. Users access content often in the first minutes after the content is posted. New content quickly replaces older content, and then the older content disappears. The local nature of the news means that users consume 90% of the content within the AWS Region where it is uploaded.

  Which solution will optimize the user experience by providing the LOWEST latency for content uploads?

  A. Upload and store content in Amazon S3. Use Amazon CloudFront for the uploads.
  B. Upload and store content in Amazon S3. Use S3 Transfer Acceleration for the uploads.
  C. Upload content to Amazon EC2 instances in the Region that is closest to the user. Copy the data to Amazon S3.
  D. Upload and store content in Amazon S3 in the Region that is closest to the user. Use multiple distributions of Amazon CloudFront.
  B. Upload and store content in Amazon S3. Use S3 Transfer Acceleration for the uploads.

• Question 43:

  A company's expense tracking application gives users the ability to upload images of receipts. The application analyzes the receipts to extract information and stores the raw images in Amazon S3. The application is written in Java and runs on Amazon EC2 On-Demand Instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer.

  The compute costs and storage costs have increased with the popularity of the application.

  Which solution will provide the MOST cost savings without affecting application performance?

  A. Purchase a Compute Savings Plan for the maximum number of necessary EC2 instances. Store the uploaded files in Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS).
  B. Decrease the minimum number of EC2 instances in the Auto Scaling group. Use On-Demand Instances for peak scaling. Store the uploaded files in Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS).
  C. Decrease the maximum number of EC2 instances in the Auto Scaling group. Set up S3 Lifecycle policies to archive the raw images to lower-cost storage tiers after 30 days.
  D. Purchase a Compute Savings Plan for the minimum number of necessary EC2 instances. Use on-demand Instances for peak scaling. Set up S3 Lifecycle policies to archive the raw images to lower-cost storage tiers after 30 days.
  D. Purchase a Compute Savings Plan for the minimum number of necessary EC2 instances. Use on-demand Instances for peak scaling. Set up S3 Lifecycle policies to archive the raw images to lower-cost storage tiers after 30 days.

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  Explanation

  The question asks for the most cost savings while not affecting application performance, and it explicitly calls out both compute costs and storage costs increasing. The best answer is the option that optimizes both cost drivers without reducing capacity needed for peak performance. Option D accomplishes this by combining two well-established cost optimization mechanisms: a Compute Savings Plan for baseline compute usage and S3 Lifecycle policies for lower-cost storage of older receipt images. A Compute Savings Plan is best applied to the steady, always-needed portion of compute capacity. In an Auto Scaling group, there is typically a predictable minimum footprint that runs continuously. Purchasing a Savings Plan for that baseline delivers substantial discounts compared with On-Demand pricing while keeping performance unchanged. For traffic spikes, continuing to use On-Demand Instances is operationally simple and preserves scaling behavior and customer experience. This avoids the risk that reducing minimum capacity could introduce slower scale-out or insufficient resources during sudden load.

  On the storage side, raw receipt images are stored in Amazon S3, and many applications access the newest objects most frequently. Using S3 Lifecycle policies to transition objects after 30 days to lower-cost tiers (such as infrequent access or archival tiers as appropriate for retrieval needs) reduces storage spend without changing how new uploads are handled or processed. It also keeps the application fast for recent receipts, where performance typically matters most. Options A and B move storage to EFS, which is generally more expensive than S3 for object storage patterns and does not align with "stored as objects." Option C reduces the maximum Auto Scaling capacity, which can directly harm performance during demand surges.

  Therefore, D provides the largest cost reduction while preserving performance and scaling characteristics.

• Question 44:

  A global company runs its workloads on AWS. The company's application uses Amazon S3 buckets across AWS Regions for sensitive data storage and analysis. The company stores millions of objects in multiple S3 buckets daily.

  The company wants to identify all S3 buckets that are not versioning-enabled.

  Which solution will meet these requirements?

  A. Use Amazon S3 Storage Lens to identify all S3 buckets that are not versioning-enabled across Regions.
  B. Enable IAM Access Analyzer for S3 to identify all S3 buckets that are not versioning-enabled across Regions.
  C. Create an S3 Multi-Region Access Point to identify all S3 buckets that are not versioning-enabled across Regions.
  B. Enable IAM Access Analyzer for S3 to identify all S3 buckets that are not versioning-enabled across Regions.

• Question 45:

  A company wants to migrate an on-premises data center to AWS. The data center hosts an SFTP server that stores its data on an NFS-based file system. The server holds 200 GB of data that needs to be transferred. The server must be hosted on an Amazon EC2 instance that uses an Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) file system.

  Which combination of steps should a solutions architect take to automate this task? (Choose two.)

  A. Launch the EC2 instance into the same Availability Zone as the EFS file system.
  B. Install an AWS DataSync agent in the on-premises data center.
  C. Create a secondary Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume on the EC2 instance for the data.
  D. Manually use an operating system copy command to push the data to the EC2 instance.
  E. Use AWS DataSync to create a suitable location configuration for the on-premises SFTP server.
  B. Install an AWS DataSync agent in the on-premises data center.
  E. Use AWS DataSync to create a suitable location configuration for the on-premises SFTP server.

• Question 46:

  A company is running its production and nonproduction environment workloads in multiple AWS accounts.

  The accounts are in an organization in AWS Organizations. The company needs to design a solution that will prevent the modification of cost usage tags.

  Which solution will meet these requirements?

  A. Create a custom AWS Config rule to prevent tag modification except by authorized principals.
  B. Create a custom trail in AWS CloudTrail to prevent tag modification.
  C. Create a service control policy (SCP) to prevent tag modification except by authorized principals.
  D. Create custom Amazon CloudWatch logs to prevent tag modification.
  C. Create a service control policy (SCP) to prevent tag modification except by authorized principals.

• Question 47:

  A company runs a web application on Amazon EC2 instances. The application also uses an Amazon DynamoDB table. The application generates sporadic HTTP 500 errors. The DynamoDB table is operating in on-demand mode, and other applications use the table without any issues.

  A solutions architect wants to resolve the HTTP 500 errors without disrupting the web application.

  Which solution will meet these requirements?

  A. Configure DynamoDB to support larger write requests for increased throughput.
  B. Enable DynamoDB Streams to monitor changes in the table.
  C. Configure the application to use exponential backoff and retries to query the table.
  D. Configure the application to use strongly consistent reads.
  C. Configure the application to use exponential backoff and retries to query the table.

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  Explanation

  Sporadic HTTP 500 errors in an application that depends on DynamoDB often indicate intermittent downstream failures (for example, transient throttling, temporary network issues, request timeouts, or service-side retryable exceptions). The prompt notes that the DynamoDB table is in on-demand mode and other applications use it without problems, which suggests the issue is not a sustained capacity shortfall or a systemic DynamoDB outage. Instead, the web application likely needs to handle occasional retryable failures more gracefully.

  Option C is the best practice for improving reliability when calling AWS services: implement exponential backoff with retries. AWS SDKs commonly include retry behavior, but many systems still require tuning (for example, increasing maximum retries, adding jitter, ensuring idempotent operations where required, and retrying only on retryable errors). Exponential backoff reduces the chance of overwhelming a service during brief contention periods and helps the application recover quickly from transient errors without user-visible failures. This approach is also minimally disruptive because it is a configuration and logic improvement rather than an architectural migration.

  Option A is not a standard DynamoDB configuration; DynamoDB has item size limits and throughput is managed via on-demand or provisioned capacity, not by "supporting larger write requests."

  Option B (Streams) provides a change data capture feed but does not prevent or mitigate request failures; it is for event processing, replication, or auditing.

  Option D (strongly consistent reads) addresses stale reads, not HTTP 500 errors, and could increase read cost/RCU consumption without solving the root cause.

  Therefore, adding exponential backoff and retries is the most appropriate and operationally sound way to reduce sporadic failures without disrupting the application's architecture or performance.

• Question 48:

  A company has an organization in AWS Organizations. The company runs Amazon EC2 instances across four AWS accounts in the root organizational unit (OU). There are three nonproduction accounts and one production account. The company wants to prohibit users from launching EC2 instances of a certain size in the nonproduction accounts. The company has created a service control policy (SCP) to deny access to launch instances that use the prohibited types.

  Which solutions to deploy the SCP will meet these requirements? (Choose two.)

  A. Attach the SCP to the root OU for the organization.
  B. Attach the SCP to the three nonproduction Organizations member accounts.
  C. Attach the SCP to the Organizations management account.
  D. Create an OU for the production account. Attach the SCP to the OU. Move the production member account into the new OU.
  E. Create an OU for the required accounts. Attach the SCP to the OU. Move the nonproduction member accounts into the new OU.
  B. Attach the SCP to the three nonproduction Organizations member accounts.
  E. Create an OU for the required accounts. Attach the SCP to the OU. Move the nonproduction member accounts into the new OU.

• Question 49:

  A company runs containers in a Kubernetes environment in the company's local data center. The company wants to use Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) and other AWS managed services. Data must remain locally in the company's data center and cannot be stored in any remote site or cloud to maintain compliance.

  Which solution will meet these requirements?

  A. Deploy AWS Local Zones in the company's data center.
  B. Use an AWS Snowmobile in the company's data center.
  C. Install an AWS Outposts rack in the company's data center.
  D. Install an AWS Snowball Edge Storage Optimized node in the data center.
  C. Install an AWS Outposts rack in the company's data center.

• Question 50:

  A company has deployed a multi-tier web application to support a website. The architecture includes an Application Load Balancer (ALB) in public subnets, two Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) tasks in the public subnets, and a PostgreSQL cluster that runs on Amazon EC2 instances in private subnets.

  The EC2 instances that host the PostgreSQL database run shell scripts that need to access an external API to retrieve product information. A solutions architect must design a solution to allow the EC2 instances to securely communicate with the external API without increasing operational overhead.

  Which solution will meet these requirements?

  A. Assign public IP addresses to the EC2 instances in the private subnets. Configure security groups to allow outbound internet access.
  B. Configure a NAT gateway in the public subnets. Update the route table for the private subnets to route traffic to the NAT gateway.
  C. Configure a VPC peering connection between the private subnets and a public subnet that has access to the external API.
  D. Deploy an interface VPC endpoint to securely connect to the external API.
  B. Configure a NAT gateway in the public subnets. Update the route table for the private subnets to route traffic to the NAT gateway.

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  Explanation

  EC2 instances in private subnets cannot access the internet unless there is a NAT gateway or a NAT instance configured.

  "To enable instances in a private subnet to connect to the internet or other AWS services, you can use a NAT gateway or NAT instance."

  -- NAT Gateways-Amazon VPC

  In this use case:

  EC2 instances are in private subnets

  They need to call external APIs (internet access)

  The most operationally efficient and secure method is to place a NAT Gateway in a public subnet and update the route table for private subnets to route internet-bound traffic through it.

  Incorrect Options:

  Option A: Private subnets don't support public IPs.

  Option C: VPC peering doesn't help reach the public internet.

  Option D: Interface endpoints are for private connectivity to AWS services, not external APIs.

  References:

  NAT Gateway Documentation

  VPC Best Practices