AWS Solution Architect Associate-C03

Practice Exam

1) You are an AWS Solutions Architect. Your company has a successful web
application deployed in an AWS Auto Scaling group. The application attracts more
and more global customers. However, the application’s performance is impacted.
Your manager asks you how to improve the performance and availability of the
application. Which of the following AWS services would you recommend?

A. AWS DataSync
B. Amazon DynamoDB Accelerator
C. AWS Lake Formation
D. AWS Global Accelerator

Answer: D

AWS Global accelerator provides static IP addresses that are anycast in the AWS edge
network. Incoming traDic is distributed across endpoints in AWS regions. The
performance and availability of the application are improved.

Option A is incorrect: Because DataSync is a tool to automate the data transfer and
does not help to improve the performance.

Option B is incorrect: DynamoDB is not mentioned in this question.

Option C is incorrect: Because AWS Lake Formation is used to manage a large amount
of data in AWS which would not help in this situation.

Option D is CORRECT: Check the AWS Global Accelerator use cases. The Global
Accelerator service can improve both application performance and availability.

2) Your team is developing a high-performance computing (HPC) application. The

application resolves complex, compute-intensive problems and needs a high-
performance and low-latency Lustre file system. You need to configure this file
system in AWS at a low cost. Which method is the most suitable?

A. Create a Lustre file system through Amazon FSx.

B. Launch a high-performance Lustre file system in Amazon EBS.
C. Create a high-speed volume cluster in an EC2 placement group.
D. Launch the Lustre file system from AWS Marketplace.

Answer: A
AWS Solution Architect Associate-C03
Practice Exam

The Lustre file system is an open-source, parallel file system that can be used for HPC
applications. Refer to http://lustre.org/ for its introduction. In Amazon FSx, users can
quickly launch a Lustre file system at a low cost.

Option A is CORRECT: Amazon FSx supports Lustre file systems and users pay for only
the resources they use.

Option B is incorrect: Although users may be able to configure a Lustre file system
through EBS, it needs lots of extra configurations, Option A is more straightforward.

Option C is incorrect: Because the EC2 placement group does not support a Lustre file
system.

Option D is incorrect: Because products in AWS Marketplace are not cost-eDective. For
Amazon FSx, there are no minimum fees or set-up charges. Check its pricing in Amazon
FSx for Lustre Pricing.

Read Now: Amazon Braket

3) You host a static website in an S3 bucket and there are global clients from
multiple regions. You want to use an AWS service to store cache for frequently
accessed content so that the latency is reduced and the data transfer rate is
increased. Which of the following options would you choose?

A. Use AWS SDKs to horizontally scale parallel requests to the Amazon S3 service
endpoints.
B. Create multiple Amazon S3 buckets and put Amazon EC2 and S3 in the same AWS
Region.
C. Enable Cross-Region Replication to several AWS Regions to serve customers from
diDerent locations.
D. Configure CloudFront to deliver the content in the S3 bucket.

Answer: D

CloudFront is able to store the frequently accessed content as a cache and the
performance is optimized. Other options may help on the performance however they do
not store cache for the S3 objects.

Option A is incorrect: This option may increase the throughput however it does not store
cache.
AWS Solution Architect Associate-C03
Practice Exam

Option B is incorrect: Because this option does not use cache.

Option C is incorrect: This option creates multiple S3 buckets in diDerent regions. It

does not improve the performance using cache.

Option D is CORRECT: Because CloudFront caches copies of the S3 files in its edge
locations and users are routed to the edge location that has the lowest latency.

4) Your company has an online game application deployed in an Auto Scaling group.
The traOic of the application is predictable. Every Friday, the traOic starts to
increase, remains high on weekends and then drops on Monday. You need to plan
the scaling actions for the Auto Scaling group. Which method is the most suitable
for the scaling policy?

A. Configure a scheduled CloudWatch event rule to launch/terminate instances at the

specified time every week.
B. Create a predefined target tracking scaling policy based on the average CPU metric
and the ASG will scale automatically.
C. Select the ASG and on the Automatic Scaling tab, add a step scaling policy to
automatically scale-out/in at fixed time every week.
D. Configure a scheduled action in the Auto Scaling group by specifying the recurrence,
start/end time, capacities, etc.

Answer: D

The correct scaling policy should be scheduled scaling as it defines your own scaling
schedule. Refer
to https://docs.aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/ec2/userguide/schedule_time.html for
details.

Option A is incorrect: This option may work. However, you have to configure a target
such as a Lambda function to perform the scaling actions.

Option B is incorrect: The target tracking scaling policy defines a target for the ASG. The
scaling actions do not happen based on a schedule.

Option C is incorrect: The step scaling policy does not configure the ASG to scale at a
specified time.

Option D is CORRECT: With scheduled scaling, users define a schedule for the ASG to
scale. This option can meet the requirements.
AWS Solution Architect Associate-C03
Practice Exam

5) You are creating several EC2 instances for a new application. For better
performance of the application, both low network latency and high network
throughput are required for the EC2 instances. All instances should be launched in
a single availability zone. How would you configure this?

A. Launch all EC2 instances in a placement group using a Cluster placement strategy.
B. Auto-assign a public IP when launching the EC2 instances.
C. Launch EC2 instances in an EC2 placement group and select the Spread placement
strategy.
D. When launching the EC2 instances, select an instance type that supports enhanced
networking.

Answer: A

The Cluster placement strategy helps to achieve a low-latency and high throughput
network. The reference is
in https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/placement-
groups.html#placement-groups-limitations-partition.

Option A is CORRECT: The Cluster placement strategy can improve network

performance among EC2 instances. The strategy can be selected when creating a
placement group:

Option B is incorrect: Because the public IP cannot improve network performance.

AWS Solution Architect Associate-C03
Practice Exam

Option C is incorrect: The Spread placement strategy is recommended when a number

of critical instances should be kept separate from each other. This strategy should not
be used in this scenario.

Option D is incorrect: The description in the option is inaccurate. The correct method is
creating a placement group with a suitable placement strategy.

Also Read: AWS OpsWorks

6) You need to deploy a machine learning application in AWS EC2. The performance
of inter-instance communication is very critical for the application and you want to
attach a network device to the instance so that the performance can be greatly
improved. Which option is the most appropriate to improve the performance?

A. Enable enhanced networking features in the EC2 instance.

B. Configure Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) in the instance.
C. Attach high-speed Elastic Network Interface (ENI) in the instance.
D. Create an Elastic File System (EFS) and mount the file system in the instance.

Answer: B

With Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA), users can get better performance if compared with
enhanced networking (Elastic Network Adapter) or Elastic Network Interface. Check the
diDerences between EFAs and ENAs
in https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/efa.html.

Option A is incorrect: Because with Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA), users can achieve a
better network performance than enhanced networking.

Option B is CORRECT: Because EFA is the most suitable method for accelerating High-
Performance Computing (HPC) and machine learning application.

Option C is incorrect: Because Elastic Network Interface (ENI) cannot improve the
performance as required.

Option D is incorrect: The Elastic File System (EFS) cannot accelerate inter-instance
communication.

7) You have an S3 bucket that receives photos uploaded by customers. When an

object is uploaded, an event notification is sent to an SQS queue with the object
AWS Solution Architect Associate-C03
Practice Exam

details. You also have an ECS cluster that gets messages from the queue to do the
batch processing. The queue size may change greatly depending on the number of
incoming messages and backend processing speed. Which metric would you use
to scale up/down the ECS cluster capacity?

A. The number of messages in the SQS queue.

B. Memory usage of the ECS cluster.
C. Number of objects in the S3 bucket.
D. Number of containers in the ECS cluster.

Answer: A

In this scenario, the SQS queue is used to store the object details which is a highly
scalable and reliable service. ECS is ideal to perform batch processing and it should
scale up or down based on the number of messages in the queue. Details please
check https://github.com/aws-samples/ecs-refarch-batch-processing.

Option A is CORRECT: Users can configure a CloudWatch alarm based on the number
of messages in the SQS queue and notify the ECS cluster to scale up or down using the
alarm.

Option B is incorrect: Because memory usage may not be able to reflect the workload.

Option C is incorrect: Because the number of objects in S3 cannot determine if the ECS
cluster should change its capacity.

Option D is incorrect: Because the number of containers cannot be used as a metric to

trigger an auto-scaling event.

10) When creating an AWS CloudFront distribution, which of the following is not an
origin?

A. Elastic Load Balancer

B. AWS S3 bucket
C. AWS MediaPackage channel endpoint
D. AWS Lambda

Answer: D
AWS Solution Architect Associate-C03
Practice Exam

Explanation: AWS Lambda is not supported directly as the CloudFront origin. However,
Lambda can be invoked through API Gateway which can be set as the origin for AWS
CloudFront. Read more
here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/Introd
uction.html

14) Your organization is building a collaboration platform for which they chose AWS
EC2 for web and application servers and MySQL RDS instance as the database. Due
to the nature of the traOic to the application, they would like to increase the
number of connections to RDS instances. How can this be achieved?

A. Login to RDS instance and modify database config file under /etc/mysql/my.cnf
B. Create a new parameter group, attach it to the DB instance and change the setting.
C. Create a new option group, attach it to the DB instance and change the setting.
D. Modify setting in the default options group attached to the DB instance.

Answer: B
AWS Solution Architect Associate-C03
Practice Exam

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_WorkingWithPara
mGroups

15) You will be launching and terminating EC2 instances on a need basis for your
workloads. You need to run some shell scripts and perform certain checks
connecting to the AWS S3 bucket when the instance is getting launched. Which of
AWS Solution Architect Associate-C03
Practice Exam

the following options will allow performing any tasks during launch? (choose
multiple)

A. Use Instance user data for shell scripts.

B. Use Instance metadata for shell scripts.
C. Use AutoScaling Group lifecycle hooks and trigger AWS Lambda function through
CloudWatch events.
D. Use Placement Groups and set “InstanceLaunch” state to trigger AWS Lambda
functions.

Answer: A, C

Option A is correct.

Option C is correct.
AWS Solution Architect Associate-C03
Practice Exam

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/ec2/userguide/lifecycle-
hooks.html#preparing-for-notification

16) Your organization has an AWS setup and planning to build Single Sign-On for
users to authenticate with on-premise Microsoft Active Directory Federation
Services (ADFS) and let users log in to the AWS console using AWS STS Enterprise
Identity Federation. Which of the following services do you need to call from AWS
STS service after you authenticate with your on-premise?

A. AssumeRoleWithSAML
B. GetFederationToken
C. AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity
D. GetCallerIdentity

Answer: A

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/STS/latest/APIReference/API_AssumeRoleWithSAML.ht
ml
AWS Solution Architect Associate-C03
Practice Exam

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_roles_providers_saml.html

18) Your organization was planning to develop a web application on AWS EC2.
Application admin was tasked to perform AWS setup required to spin EC2 instance
inside an existing private VPC. He/she has created a subnet and wants to ensure no
other subnets in the VPC can communicate with your subnet except for the specific
IP address. So he/she created a new route table and associated with the new
subnet. When he/she was trying to delete the route with the target as local, there is
no option to delete the route. What could have caused this behavior?

A. Policy attached to IAM user does not have access to remove routes.
B. A route with the target as local cannot be deleted.
C. You cannot add/delete routes when associated with the subnet. Remove associated,
add/delete routes and associate again with the subnet.
D. There must be at least one route on the route table. Add a new route to enable delete
option on existing routes.

Answer: B
AWS Solution Architect Associate-C03
Practice Exam

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonVPC/latest/UserGuide/VPC_Route_Tables.html
#RouteTa

20) Organization ABC has a requirement to send emails to multiple users from their
application deployed on EC2 instance in a private VPC. Email receivers will not be
IAM users. You have decided to use AWS Simple Email Service and configured from
email address. You are using AWS SES API to send emails from your EC2 instance
to multiple users. However, email sending getting failed. Which of the following
options could be the reason?

A. You have not created VPC endpoint for SES service and configured in the route table.
B. AWS SES is in sandbox mode by default which can send emails only to verified email
addresses.
C. IAM user of configured from email address does not have access AWS SES to send
emails.
D. AWS SES cannot send emails to addresses which are not configured as IAM users.
You have to use the SMTP service provided by AWS.

Answer: B

Amazon SES is an email platform that provides an easy, cost-eDective way for you to
send and receive email using your own email addresses and domains.

For example, you can send marketing emails such as special oDers, transactional
emails such as order confirmations, and other types of correspondence such as
newsletters. When you use Amazon SES to receive mail, you can develop software
AWS Solution Architect Associate-C03
Practice Exam

solutions such as email autoresponders, email unsubscribe systems and applications

that generate customer support tickets from incoming emails.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/limits.html

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/request-production-
access.html

21) You have configured AWS S3 event notification to send a message to AWS
Simple Queue Service whenever an object is deleted. You are performing a
ReceiveMessage API operation on the AWS SQS queue to receive the S3 delete
object message onto AWS EC2 instance. For any successful message operations,
you are deleting them from the queue. For failed operations, you are not deleting
the messages. You have developed a retry mechanism which reruns the
application every 5 minutes for failed ReceiveMessage operations. However, you
are not receiving the messages again during the rerun. What could have caused
this?

A. AWS SQS deletes the message after it has been read through ReceiveMessage API
B. You are using Long Polling which does not guarantee message delivery.
C. Failed ReceiveMessage queue messages are automatically sent to Dead Letter
AWS Solution Architect Associate-C03
Practice Exam

Queues. You need to ReceiveMessage from Dead Letter Queue for failed retries.
D. Visibility Timeout on the SQS queue is set to 10 minutes.

Answer: D

When a consumer receives and processes a message from a queue, the message
remains in the queue. Amazon SQS doesn’t automatically delete the message. Because
Amazon SQS is a distributed system, there’s no guarantee that the consumer actually
receives the message (for example, due to a connectivity issue, or due to an issue in the
consumer application). Thus, the consumer must delete the message from the queue
after receiving and processing it.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSSimpleQueueService/latest/SQSDeveloperGuide/s
qs-visibility-timeout.html