Amazon AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate SAA-C03 Exam Practice Test

Answer : C

A VPC gateway endpoint for Amazon S3 enables private connectivity to S3 without routing traffic through a NAT gateway or over the internet, eliminating NAT gateway costs. This solution is secure and redundant, as S3 endpoints are highly available by design.

AWS Documentation Extract:

'A gateway VPC endpoint enables you to privately connect your VPC to supported AWS services without requiring a NAT gateway or internet gateway.'

(Source: Amazon VPC documentation, Gateway Endpoints)

A: NAT instances still incur operational overhead and costs.

B: Internet gateway exposes resources and does not provide private access.

D: Direct Connect is for hybrid networking, not for cost-efficient S3 access.

Answer : D

Migrate the database to Amazon Aurora MySQL - this will let the DB scale on it's own; it'll scale automatically without needing adjustment. Create AMI of the web app and using a launch template - this will make the creating of any future instances of the app seamless. They can then be added to the auto scaling group which will save them money as it will scale up and down based on demand. Using a spot fleet to launch instances- This solves the 'MOST cost-effective' portion of the question as spot instances come at a huge discount at the cost of being terminated at any time Amazon deems fit. I think this is why there's a bit of disagreement on this. While it's the most cost effective, it would be a terrible choice if amazon were to terminate that spot instance during a busy period.

Answer : D

Amazon EFS requires a mount target in each Availability Zone where EC2 instances access the file system. This is because each mount target provides an elastic network interface in the subnet and AZ, reducing network latency by allowing EC2 instances to communicate locally with the EFS mount target. Creating a mount target in each AZ optimizes file system access performance and availability. Instances mount the EFS file system via the mount target in their respective AZ, which provides the lowest possible latency and avoids cross-AZ traffic.

Option A, with only a single mount target in the VPC, will cause cross-AZ traffic for instances in other AZs, increasing latency and potentially incurring data transfer costs. Option B is incomplete and introduces complexity with sharing directories across instances. Option C is invalid because mount targets are per AZ and per subnet, not per instance.

Amazon EFS Overview (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/efs/latest/ug/whatisefs.html)

Creating Mount Targets (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/efs/latest/ug/manage-fs-access.html#creating-mount-targets)

AWS Well-Architected Framework --- Performance Efficiency Pillar (https://d1.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/architecture/AWS_Well-Architected_Framework.pdf)

Answer : C

Amazon Route 53 Resolver endpoints allow you to integrate DNS between AWS and on-premises environments easily. By creating inbound and outbound resolver endpoints, you can configure conditional forwarding rules so that DNS queries for your on-premises AD domain are forwarded to the on-premises DNS servers. This approach is fully managed, scales automatically, and requires the least administrative overhead.

AWS Documentation Extract:

'Route 53 Resolver provides DNS resolution between AWS and on-premises environments, using endpoints and forwarding rules to manage DNS query routing seamlessly.'

(Source: Route 53 Resolver documentation)

A, D: Require provisioning, managing, and patching EC2 servers or domain controllers.

B: NS records in a private hosted zone do not provide true DNS forwarding.

Answer : C

This option is the most efficient because it requests an Amazon issued public certificate from AWS Certificate Manager (ACM), which is a service that lets you easily provision,manage, and deploy public and private SSL/TLS certificates for use with AWS services and your internal connected resources1.It also requests the certificate in the us-east-1 Region, which is required for using an ACM certificate with CloudFront2.It also meets therequirement of deploying the certificate without incurring any additional costs, as ACM does not charge for certificates that are used with supported AWS services3. This solution meets the requirement of configuring its CloudFront distribution to use SSL/TLS certificates and using a different domain name for the distribution. Option A is less efficient because it requests an Amazon issued private certificate from ACM, which is a type of certificate that can be used only within your organization or virtual private cloud (VPC). However, this does not meet the requirement of configuring its CloudFront distribution to use SSL/TLS certificates, as CloudFront requires a public certificate. It also requests the certificate in the us-east-1 Region, which is correct. Option B is less efficient because it requests an Amazon issued private certificate from ACM, which is incorrect for the same reason as option A. It also requests the certificate in the us-west-1 Region, which is incorrect as CloudFront requires a certificate in the us-east-1 Region. Option D is less efficient because it requests an Amazon issued public certificate from ACM, which is correct. However, it requests the certificate in the us-west-1 Region, which is incorrect as CloudFront requires a certificate in the us-east-1 Region.

Answer : C

Amazon Macie is a fully managed data security and data privacy service that uses machine learning and pattern matching to discover and protect your sensitive data in AWS. Macie can run data discovery jobs that use managed identifiers for various types of PII or financial information, such as passport numbers and credit card numbers. Macie can also generate findings that alert you to potential issues or risks with your data.Reference:https://docs.aws.amazon.com/macie/latest/userguide/macie-identifiers.html

Answer : C

This option is the most efficient because it uses Amazon SQS, which is a fully managed message queuing service that lets you send, store, and receive messages between software components at any volume, without losing messages or requiring other services to be available1. It also uses an SQS message queue to asynchronously dispatch requests to the different application tiers, which decouples the image upload process from the thumbnail generation process and enables scalability and reliability. It also alerts the user through an application message that the image was received, which provides a faster response time to the user than waiting for the thumbnail generation to complete. Option A is less efficient because it uses a custom AWS Lambda function to generate the thumbnail and alert the user, which is a way to run code without provisioning or managing servers. However, this does not use an asynchronous dispatch mechanism to separate the image upload process from the thumbnail generation process. It also uses the image upload process as an event source to invoke the Lambda function, which could cause concurrency issues if there are many images uploaded at once.Option B is less efficient because it uses AWS Step Functions, whichis a fully managed service that provides a graphical console to arrange and visualize the components of your application as a series of steps2. However, this does not use an asynchronous dispatch mechanism to separate the image upload process from the thumbnail generation process. It also uses Step Functions to handle the orchestration between the application tiers and alert the user when thumbnail generation is complete, which could introduce additional complexity and latency.Option D is less efficient because it uses Amazon SNS, which is a fully managed messaging service that enables you to send messages or notifications directly to users with SMS text messages or email3. However, this does not use an asynchronous dispatch mechanism to separate the image upload process from the thumbnail generation process. It also uses SNS notification topics and subscriptions to generate the thumbnail after the image upload is complete and message the user's mobile app by way of a push notification after thumbnail generation is complete, which could introduce additional complexity and latency.