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AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) • STUDY MODE

SAA-C03 Practice Quiz 1

QUESTION 1 OF 30

A company needs to store sensitive data in Amazon S3. Compliance requirements mandate that data must be encrypted at rest with keys managed by the company in AWS KMS, with an explicit audit trail of key usage. Which method satisfies this requirement?

A
SSE-S3 (Server-Side Encryption with Amazon S3 Managed Keys)
B
SSE-KMS (Server-Side Encryption with AWS KMS Keys)Correct Answer
C
Client-Side Encryption with unmanaged keys
D
SSE-C (Server-Side Encryption with Customer-Provided Keys)
Explanation:

SSE-KMS encrypts S3 objects using AWS Key Management Service (KMS). It allows the company to retain key management control, set key rotation policies, and provides full AWS CloudTrail audit logs of every key usage event.

QUESTION 2 OF 30

An application running on EC2 instances in a private subnet needs to access Amazon DynamoDB without traversing the public internet. Which architecture option fulfills this with zero internet exposure?

A
NAT Gateway in public subnet
B
DynamoDB Gateway VPC EndpointCorrect Answer
C
Interface VPC Endpoint powered by AWS PrivateLink
D
Internet Gateway with security group restrictions
Explanation:

AWS provides Gateway VPC Endpoints for Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon S3 free of charge. A Gateway VPC Endpoint routes traffic directly from the private subnet to DynamoDB via the AWS internal network without internet egress.

QUESTION 3 OF 30

A web application experiences unexpected traffic spikes. The application architecture uses an Auto Scaling Group behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The solution architect needs to prevent sudden surges from overwhelming EC2 instances before Auto Scaling can add capacity. Which component should be added?

A
AWS WAF rate-based rules
B
Amazon SQS queue to decouple request processingCorrect Answer
C
Amazon CloudFront with Origin Shield
D
Global Accelerator with endpoint weights
Explanation:

Using Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) buffers incoming requests, decoupling the web tier from worker EC2 instances so traffic bursts are queued safely without dropping requests.

QUESTION 4 OF 30

A company requires a multi-region disaster recovery strategy with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of less than 1 second and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of less than 1 minute for a relational database. Which service best satisfies these requirements?

A
Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployment
B
Amazon Aurora Global DatabaseCorrect Answer
C
Amazon RDS Cross-Region Read Replicas
D
AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) continuous replication
Explanation:

Amazon Aurora Global Database uses storage-based replication across multiple AWS Regions with latency under 1 second and automatic failover in under 1 minute.

QUESTION 5 OF 30

A company wants to host a static website on Amazon S3 and serve it globally with HTTPS encryption via Amazon CloudFront. The S3 bucket must not be accessible directly via public S3 URLs. Which security feature should be configured?

A
Origin Access Control (OAC)Correct Answer
B
S3 Bucket ACLs with public access blocked
C
AWS WAF web ACL attached directly to S3
D
VPC Interface Endpoint for CloudFront
Explanation:

Amazon CloudFront Origin Access Control (OAC) restricts direct access to S3 buckets, ensuring requests must originate through CloudFront.

QUESTION 6 OF 30

A solutions architect must design a highly available microservices infrastructure using Docker containers. The company wants to minimize operational overhead and avoid managing underlying EC2 servers. Which compute service should be selected?

A
Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling with ECS container instances
B
AWS Fargate with Amazon ECS or EKSCorrect Answer
C
AWS Elastic Beanstalk Single Instance
D
AWS Batch on Spot Instances
Explanation:

AWS Fargate is a serverless compute engine for containers that works with ECS and EKS. It eliminates the need to provision, configure, or scale EC2 instances.

QUESTION 7 OF 30

A legacy file server application requires shared access to a POSIX-compliant file system from multiple EC2 Linux instances across multiple Availability Zones. Which storage service is most suitable?

A
Amazon EBS Provisioned IOPS (io2)
B
Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)Correct Answer
C
Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval
D
AWS Storage Gateway Volume Gateway
Explanation:

Amazon EFS provides scalable, serverless POSIX-compliant file storage that can be concurrently mounted by thousands of EC2 instances across multiple AZs.

QUESTION 8 OF 30

An organization requires all VPC network traffic logs to be captured and analyzed for security compliance auditing. Which feature provides native logging of IP traffic entering and leaving VPC network interfaces?

A
AWS CloudTrail log streams
B
VPC Flow LogsCorrect Answer
C
Amazon GuardDuty malware protection
D
AWS Config rule evaluation
Explanation:

VPC Flow Logs captures information about the IP traffic going to and from network interfaces in your VPC, publishing raw traffic data to CloudWatch Logs or Amazon S3.

QUESTION 9 OF 30

A company needs to store unstructured archival data for regulatory compliance for 10 years. Data is rarely accessed, but when requested, retrieval within 3 to 5 hours is acceptable. Which S3 storage class offers the lowest storage cost?

A
S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA)
B
S3 Glacier Flexible RetrievalCorrect Answer
C
S3 One Zone-IA
D
S3 Glacier Deep Archive
Explanation:

S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval provides low-cost archive storage with standard retrieval options between 3 and 5 hours. (Deep Archive requires 12 hours).

QUESTION 10 OF 30

A company runs an application that processes large batch files on EC2 instances. The workload can tolerate interruptions and must run at the lowest possible cost. Which EC2 instance purchasing option should be used?

A
On-Demand Instances
B
Spot InstancesCorrect Answer
C
Reserved Instances (1-year term)
D
Dedicated Hosts
Explanation:

Spot Instances offer spare EC2 capacity at up to 90% savings compared to On-Demand prices, perfect for fault-tolerant, flexible batch processing workloads.

QUESTION 11 OF 30

Which AWS service automatically inspects application traffic for common web exploits such as SQL Injection (SQLi) and Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)?

A
AWS Shield Standard
B
AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall)Correct Answer
C
Amazon Inspector
D
AWS KMS
Explanation:

AWS WAF helps protect web applications from common web exploits by allowing you to configure rules that block SQL injection, XSS, and bot traffic.

QUESTION 12 OF 30

An application requires a globally distributed relational database with read replicas in multiple regions to support low-latency local reads for international users. Which Amazon Aurora deployment satisfies this?

A
Aurora Multi-Master Cluster
B
Aurora Global DatabaseCorrect Answer
C
Aurora Auto Scaling Replica Fleet
D
Aurora Serverless v2 single-region
Explanation:

Aurora Global Database spans multiple AWS Regions, enabling fast local reads with sub-second replication latency across global regions.

QUESTION 13 OF 30

A company needs to securely connect their on-premises data center to an AWS VPC over a dedicated 10 Gbps private network connection with consistent performance. Which AWS service should be implemented?

A
AWS Site-to-Site VPN
B
AWS Direct ConnectCorrect Answer
C
AWS Transit Gateway peering
D
Amazon Route 53 Resolver
Explanation:

AWS Direct Connect links your internal network directly to an AWS Direct Connect location over a dedicated physical fiber connection, bypassing the public internet.

QUESTION 14 OF 30

A company wants to distribute incoming traffic evenly across a fleet of EC2 instances running web servers in multiple Availability Zones. Which service performs OSI Layer 7 routing and SSL termination?

A
Network Load Balancer (NLB)
B
Application Load Balancer (ALB)Correct Answer
C
Classic Load Balancer (CLB)
D
AWS Gateway Load Balancer (GWLB)
Explanation:

Application Load Balancer operates at Layer 7 (HTTP/HTTPS) and features advanced path-based routing, host-based routing, and native SSL/TLS termination.

QUESTION 15 OF 30

An enterprise wants to centralize governance and security controls across 50 AWS accounts using automated policy guardrails. Which AWS service should be used to manage account hierarchies and apply Service Control Policies (SCPs)?

A
AWS IAM Identity Center
B
AWS OrganizationsCorrect Answer
C
AWS Control Tower
D
AWS Resource Access Manager (RAM)
Explanation:

AWS Organizations allows you to centrally manage multiple AWS accounts and enforce Service Control Policies (SCPs) across account organizational units (OUs).

QUESTION 16 OF 30

A company requires a highly available DNS routing service that can perform health checks on endpoints and perform failover routing to a secondary backup region. Which service fulfills this requirement?

A
Amazon Route 53Correct Answer
B
AWS Global Accelerator
C
Elastic Load Balancing
D
Amazon CloudFront
Explanation:

Amazon Route 53 is a scalable Cloud DNS web service that provides health checks and DNS failover routing to direct users to healthy application endpoints.

QUESTION 17 OF 30

A company needs to run a high-performance computing (HPC) workload that requires tightly coupled Linux nodes with low-latency inter-node communication. Which network feature should be configured on the EC2 instances?

A
Enhanced Networking with SR-IOV
B
Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA)Correct Answer
C
Elastic Network Adapter (ENA)
D
VPC Peering connection
Explanation:

Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) is a network interface for EC2 instances that enables high-performance computing (HPC) and machine learning applications to bypass the OS kernel for sub-millisecond node communication.

QUESTION 18 OF 30

A company needs to cache database query results for a high-traffic web application to reduce read latency on Amazon RDS for MySQL. Which fully managed in-memory caching service is best suited?

A
Amazon CloudFront
B
Amazon ElastiCache (Redis / Memcached)Correct Answer
C
Amazon MemoryDB for Redis
D
AWS Secrets Manager
Explanation:

Amazon ElastiCache allows you to deploy sub-millisecond, fully managed Redis or Memcached in-memory data stores to offload read traffic from RDS databases.

QUESTION 19 OF 30

Which S3 storage class uses machine learning to automatically move objects between frequent access and infrequent access tiers based on changing access patterns without operational overhead?

A
S3 Standard-IA
B
S3 Intelligent-TieringCorrect Answer
C
S3 One Zone-IA
D
S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval
Explanation:

S3 Intelligent-Tiering automatically optimizes storage costs by moving granular objects between access tiers when access patterns change, with no retrieval fees.

QUESTION 20 OF 30

A company needs to audit and evaluate resource configurations across all AWS accounts to detect non-compliant security groups and unencrypted EBS volumes. Which service performs automated configuration monitoring?

A
AWS Security Hub
B
AWS ConfigCorrect Answer
C
AWS CloudTrail
D
Amazon EventBridge
Explanation:

AWS Config continually monitors and records resource configurations and evaluates them against desired compliance rules (e.g., flagging unencrypted storage).

QUESTION 21 OF 30

An application needs to process real-time streaming financial transactions and store the records durable for batch analytics. Which AWS service ingests continuous streaming data at scale?

A
Amazon Kinesis Data StreamsCorrect Answer
B
Amazon SQS Queue
C
Amazon SNS Topic
D
AWS Glue ETL
Explanation:

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams enables real-time collection and processing of large streams of data records from thousands of sources concurrently.

QUESTION 22 OF 30

A company wants to quickly deploy and manage a web application without configuring individual networking, database, or compute infrastructure components. Which PaaS service abstracts server deployment?

A
AWS OpsWorks
B
AWS Elastic BeanstalkCorrect Answer
C
AWS CloudFormation
D
AWS CodeDeploy
Explanation:

AWS Elastic Beanstalk is an easy-to-use Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for deploying and scaling web applications developed with Java, .NET, PHP, Node.js, Python, Ruby, and Docker.

QUESTION 23 OF 30

Which AWS security service uses machine learning and anomaly detection to continuously monitor AWS accounts, workloads, and S3 data for suspicious activity?

A
Amazon Inspector
B
Amazon GuardDutyCorrect Answer
C
AWS Shield Advanced
D
AWS Macie
Explanation:

Amazon GuardDuty is an intelligent threat detection service that monitors CloudTrail logs, VPC Flow Logs, and DNS logs to identify unauthorized or malicious behavior.

QUESTION 24 OF 30

A company requires automated infrastructure deployment using code templates defined in JSON or YAML. Which Infrastructure as Code (IaC) service natively manages AWS resource stacks?

A
AWS CloudFormationCorrect Answer
B
AWS Systems Manager
C
AWS Service Catalog
D
AWS CodePipeline
Explanation:

AWS CloudFormation allows you to model, provision, and manage AWS and third-party resources by declaring them in automated JSON or YAML template files.

QUESTION 25 OF 30

A company needs to discover, classify, and protect sensitive Personally Identifiable Information (PII) like credit card numbers stored in Amazon S3 buckets. Which service should be used?

A
Amazon GuardDuty
B
Amazon MacieCorrect Answer
C
AWS Inspector
D
AWS KMS
Explanation:

Amazon Macie uses machine learning and pattern matching to discover, monitor, and protect sensitive data (such as PII and financial records) stored in Amazon S3.

QUESTION 26 OF 30

Which Amazon EBS volume type offers the highest performance for mission-critical I/O-intensive database workloads requiring sustained IOPS exceeding 64,000 IOPS per volume?

A
General Purpose SSD (gp3)
B
Provisioned IOPS SSD (io2 Block Express)Correct Answer
C
Throughput Optimized HDD (st1)
D
Cold HDD (sc1)
Explanation:

EBS io2 Block Express volumes deliver up to 256,000 IOPS and 4,000 MB/s throughput with sub-millisecond latency for demanding database workloads.

QUESTION 27 OF 30

A web application requires session persistence (sticky sessions) so user requests are routed to the same target EC2 instance. Which load balancer feature satisfies this requirement?

A
Cross-Zone Load Balancing
B
Sticky Sessions (Target Group Cookie Persistence)Correct Answer
C
Connection Draining
D
SNI Multi-Domain Certificate Binding
Explanation:

Sticky sessions bind a user session to a specific EC2 instance in a target group using HTTP cookies, ensuring stateful session continuity.

QUESTION 28 OF 30

A company needs to execute custom code in response to file upload events in an Amazon S3 bucket without managing servers. Which computing paradigm should be selected?

A
Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling
B
AWS LambdaCorrect Answer
C
AWS Fargate Container Task
D
AWS Lightsail
Explanation:

AWS Lambda is a serverless event-driven compute service that runs code directly in response to S3 upload triggers without server management.

QUESTION 29 OF 30

Which Amazon Route 53 routing policy routes internet traffic to the AWS Region that offers the lowest network latency for the user requesting the domain?

A
Geolocation Routing Policy
B
Latency-Based Routing PolicyCorrect Answer
C
Weighted Routing Policy
D
Failover Routing Policy
Explanation:

Latency-based routing uses network latency measurements between users and AWS data centers to automatically route user requests to the region with the lowest latency.

QUESTION 30 OF 30

An organization requires a dedicated hardware appliance to securely store and manage cryptographic keys compliant with FIPS 140-2 Level 3 security standard. Which service fulfills this requirement?

A
AWS KMS
B
AWS CloudHSMCorrect Answer
C
AWS Secrets Manager
D
AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store
Explanation:

AWS CloudHSM provides dedicated single-tenant Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) inside your VPC certified under FIPS 140-2 Level 3.

Ready to test your recall?

A company needs to store sensitive data in Amazon S3. Compliance requirements mandate that data must be encrypted at rest with keys managed by the company in AWS KMS, with an explicit audit trail of key usage. Which method satisfies this requirement?

A
SSE-S3 (Server-Side Encryption with Amazon S3 Managed Keys)
B
SSE-KMS (Server-Side Encryption with AWS KMS Keys)
C
Client-Side Encryption with unmanaged keys
D
SSE-C (Server-Side Encryption with Customer-Provided Keys)

How confident are you in this answer?