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Free AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate SAA-C03 Practice Test
Prepare for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate SAA-C03 exam with this free practice test. Randomly generated and customizable, this test allows you to choose the number of questions.
- Questions: 15
- Time: 15 minutes (60 seconds per question)
- Included Objectives:Design Secure ArchitecturesDesign Resilient ArchitecturesDesign High-Performing ArchitecturesDesign Cost-Optimized Architectures
A startup's web application is gaining popularity and the technical leadership is worried about potential disruptions caused by volumetric attacks from malicious actors. As the Solutions Architect, which service should be employed to safeguard the application's uptime and performance?
AWS Central Firewall Manager
AWS Shield
Amazon Security Inspector
AWS Web Application Firewall
Answer Description
The correct service to mitigate Distributed Denial of Service attacks is AWS Shield. It provides automatic protection that safeguards web applications without necessitating any modifications to the existing setup. AWS Shield Standard is automatically included with certain AWS services such as Amazon CloudFront and provides protection against the most common attacks at no additional cost. For higher levels of protection, AWS Shield Advanced offers more comprehensive defenses against larger and more complex attacks, including access to the 24/7 AWS DDoS Response Team. AWS WAF primarily protects web applications from common web exploits that could affect application availability, security, and compliance, but is not directly aimed at DDoS protection. AWS Firewall Manager is a service that allows you to centrally manage firewall rules across your accounts and applications in AWS Organizations, but it does not directly mitigate DDoS attacks. Amazon Inspector is used to perform security assessments and find vulnerabilities, not for real-time attack mitigation.
Ask Bash
Bash is our AI bot, trained to help you pass your exam. AI Generated Content may display inaccurate information, always double-check anything important.
What is AWS Shield and how does it work?
What are volumetric attacks, and how do they impact web applications?
What is the difference between AWS Shield and AWS WAF?
A company needs to run data analytics workloads which require high sequential read and write access to very large datasets stored locally in instance storage. Which Amazon EC2 instance type should they choose?
Compute Optimized instances.
Accelerated Computing instances.
Storage Optimized instances.
Memory Optimized instances.
Answer Description
Storage Optimized instances such as I3, I4i and D2 families are ideal for workloads that require high, sequential read and write access to large datasets in local instance storage. They provide low-latency, high-throughput access to massive amounts of data, making them suitable for applications like data warehousing and Hadoop distributed computing workloads. Compute Optimized instances are designed for compute-intensive workloads that benefit from high-performance processors, but they do not focus on enhanced storage performance. Memory Optimized instances are best for workloads that require large amounts of memory, offering high memory-to-CPU ratios, which is beneficial for real-time big data analytics and in-memory databases. Accelerated Computing instances use hardware accelerators, such as GPUs or FPGAs, to perform functions like graphics processing or parallel computations more efficiently, but they are not specifically optimized for high-performance local storage access.
Ask Bash
Bash is our AI bot, trained to help you pass your exam. AI Generated Content may display inaccurate information, always double-check anything important.
What are Storage Optimized instances?
How do Storage Optimized instances compare to Memory Optimized instances?
What are the key features of I3 and I4i instance families?
A financial team at a growing company needs to generate predictive spend reports for new applications set to launch the next quarter while also keeping an eye on ongoing services. Which service within the cloud provider platform should be utilized by the Solutions Architect to fulfill this requirement for cost forecast reporting?
AWS Billing Dashboard
AWS Cost Explorer
Detailed Billing Report
Trusted Advisor
Answer Description
The correct service to use in this case is AWS Cost Explorer because it allows users to create detailed and customizable reports that include both historical and forecasted data regarding cloud expenses. It can help the financial team understand future costs associated with new and existing cloud resources. While AWS Budgets assists in setting budget thresholds and alerts, it doesn't offer predictive reporting features. AWS Cost and Usage Report delivers comprehensive usage and cost data but lacks forecasting capabilities. Lastly, the AWS Pricing Calculator is designed to estimate costs prior to committing to services and does not produce past usage reports or future spend predictions.
Ask Bash
Bash is our AI bot, trained to help you pass your exam. AI Generated Content may display inaccurate information, always double-check anything important.
How does AWS Cost Explorer generate predictive spend reports?
What other features does AWS Cost Explorer offer beyond predictive reporting?
What are the differences between AWS Cost Explorer and AWS Budgets?
A software development company is deploying an application in AWS and has a development team with varying access requirements. Some developers need read-only access to certain resources, while others require full administrative access to different services. The company anticipates rapid team expansion and wants to manage permissions in a scalable and organized manner without over-provisioning access. What is the most effective way to implement a flexible authorization model to satisfy these needs?
Organize users into groups based on permissions and assign policies to the groups.
Create roles for each permission set and have users assume these roles when needed.
Attach the necessary permissions directly to each individual user account.
Grant all users full access to resources to simplify management.
Answer Description
Organizing users into groups based on their access requirements and attaching appropriate policies to these groups is the most effective approach. This method implements a role based access control (RBAC) which allows for centralized permission management, making it easier to assign or revoke access as team members join or leave. It also reduces the complexity of managing individual permissions for each user and minimizes the risk of granting unnecessary privileges. Attaching permissions directly to individual user accounts is not scalable as the team grows. Using roles for each permission set is more suitable for temporary or cross-account access rather than managing team permissions. Granting all users full access goes against the principle of least privilege and poses security risks.
Ask Bash
Bash is our AI bot, trained to help you pass your exam. AI Generated Content may display inaccurate information, always double-check anything important.
What is role-based access control (RBAC)?
Why is it not scalable to attach permissions directly to individual user accounts?
What are the security risks of granting all users full access to resources?
Which service enables the creation and control of encryption keys used to secure data storage services?
Key Management Service
Simple Storage Service
Identity and Access Management
Elastic Compute Cloud
Answer Description
The correct service, Key Management Service, provides a centralized control point for managing cryptographic keys. It integrates with various storage and database services to enable the encryption of data at rest. The service also allows for the implementation of automatic key rotation, helping maintain security compliance. Elastic Compute Cloud deals with compute capacity and utilizes encryption keys but does not manage them. Identity and Access Management is focused on managing identities and permissions, not encryption keys. Simple Storage Service offers data storage and also supports encryption but by itself does not manage the keys used for encrypting data.
Ask Bash
Bash is our AI bot, trained to help you pass your exam. AI Generated Content may display inaccurate information, always double-check anything important.
What types of encryption can Key Management Service (KMS) support?
How does automatic key rotation work in KMS?
How does KMS integrate with other AWS services?
A company's application hosted on AWS uses a database that is read-heavy and experiences occasional spikes in read traffic, causing performance degradation. To optimize for cost and performance, which of the following is the MOST appropriate caching strategy to implement?
Implementing Amazon S3 Select to quickly retrieve necessary data from S3 buckets instead of the database.
Utilizing Amazon ElastiCache for Redis to store and retrieve commonly accessed data.
Increasing the size and computation power of the database to handle the spikes in read traffic.
Deploying compute instances configured with ephemeral storage to cache frequent database queries.
Answer Description
Using Amazon ElastiCache for Redis as a caching layer in front of the database can greatly enhance read performance by storing frequently accessed data in-memory. This reduces database load, leading to potentially lower costs by avoiding the need for scaling the database to meet sporadic read traffic spikes. Amazon ElastiCache supports complex data types and atomic operations, which makes it highly suitable for read-heavy database workloads. On the other hand, placing compute instances with ephemeral storage as a cache or using Amazon S3 Select would not offer the same level of latency optimization for database read operations. Amazon S3 Select is specifically designed for retrieving subsets of data from objects in S3 and would not serve as an effective front-end cache for a database.
Ask Bash
Bash is our AI bot, trained to help you pass your exam. AI Generated Content may display inaccurate information, always double-check anything important.
What is Amazon ElastiCache and how does it work?
What are the advantages of using Redis with ElastiCache?
What are the differences between caching and database scaling?
A financial institution requires an archiving solution for critical data stored on local file servers. The data must be accessible with minimal delay when requested by on-premises users, yet older, less frequently accessed files should be economically archived in the cloud. However, after a specific period of inactivity, these older files should be transitioned to a less expensive storage class. Which solution should the architect recommend to meet these needs in a cost-efficient manner?
An online data transfer service
A fully managed file storage service for Windows files
A managed file transfer service
File gateway mode of a certain hybrid storage service
Answer Description
File gateway mode of a certain hybrid storage service provides a seamless way to integrate on-premises file systems with cloud storage like Amazon S3, ensuring low-latency access via local caching. It also offers automatic tiering capabilities to transition data to cost-saving storage classes after set periods of inactivity. This makes it a suitable solution for the financial institution's requirements. The alternatives mentioned do not offer the same combined functionality regarding local caching, seamless integration with cloud storage, and automatic tiering based on inactivity, thus, they would not present the most efficient solution for the given scenario.
Ask Bash
Bash is our AI bot, trained to help you pass your exam. AI Generated Content may display inaccurate information, always double-check anything important.
What is a File Gateway in AWS?
What is automatic tiering in cloud storage?
Why is low-latency access important for on-premises users?
A fintech startup's web portal has stringent security requirements, demanding SSL termination at the load balancer to offload SSL processing from the web servers. The application also requires the capability to route client requests based on custom HTTP headers and to utilize WebSockets for real-time updates. Considering these criteria, which load balancing option should you, as a solutions architect, suggest for this startup's architecture?
AWS Global Accelerator
Amazon CloudFront
Network Load Balancer (NLB)
Application Load Balancer (ALB)
Answer Description
The Application Load Balancer (ALB) is designed to work at the application layer (Layer 7) of the OSI model and supports content-based routing. It can terminate SSL connections, thus offloading SSL processing from the backend servers, and route traffic based on HTTP headers, which fits the specified requirements. Additionally, ALB has support for WebSocket, which is a protocol providing full-duplex communication channels over a single TCP connection. The Network Load Balancer (NLB) operates at Layer 4 and does not support SSL termination or content-based routing. While Amazon CloudFront supports SSL termination, WebSocket, and can route based on headers, it is primarily a content delivery network, not a load balancer designed to manage application traffic across server resources. Lastly, AWS Global Accelerator improves global application availability and performance but lacks the specified application layer routing capabilities.
Ask Bash
Bash is our AI bot, trained to help you pass your exam. AI Generated Content may display inaccurate information, always double-check anything important.
What is SSL termination, and why is it important for web applications?
What are custom HTTP headers, and how do they enhance web application functionality?
Can you explain what WebSockets are and their advantages in real-time applications?
Amazon Route 53 can be used to provide automatic failover in the event of an application failure.
False.
True.
Answer Description
This statement is true. Amazon Route 53 is a highly available and scalable cloud Domain Name System (DNS) service. It supports health checks and DNS failover which routes users to alternative resources when the primary resource becomes unhealthy based on a pre-defined threshold. By configuring Route 53 with health checks and failover routing policy, you can automatically redirect traffic to standby resources in case of an application failure, thus mitigating single points of failure.
Ask Bash
Bash is our AI bot, trained to help you pass your exam. AI Generated Content may display inaccurate information, always double-check anything important.
What are health checks in Amazon Route 53?
What is DNS failover and how does it work with Route 53?
What is a failover routing policy in Route 53?
A company is deploying a new application on AWS and wants to ensure that the web servers are publicly available while keeping the database servers private and secure. They are planning to use Amazon EC2 instances for both web and database layers. Which of the following configurations aligns with best practices for network architecture design in an AWS VPC?
Place both the web servers and the database servers in the same public subnet, using security groups and network ACLs to restrict traffic to the database servers.
Place the web servers in a private subnet with direct internet access through a NAT Gateway and the database servers in a separate private subnet without internet access.
Deploy all the servers in a private subnet and use a VPN connection for external users to access the web application.
Place the web servers in a public subnet that has an Internet Gateway and place the database servers in a private subnet that does not have an Internet Gateway but can accessed through a NAT Gateway for outbound traffic.
Answer Description
The most secure and common practice for network architecture within a VPC is to place resources with different security levels into separate subnets. Public web servers should be placed in a public subnet with an Internet Gateway to allow traffic from the internet. Database servers should be placed in a private subnet without direct access to the internet, enhancing their security. NAT gateways are used to allow instances in a private subnet to initiate outbound internet traffic (for updates, patches, etc.) without being directly accessible from the internet.
Ask Bash
Bash is our AI bot, trained to help you pass your exam. AI Generated Content may display inaccurate information, always double-check anything important.
What is a VPC in AWS?
What is the role of a NAT Gateway?
What are security groups and network ACLs?
You have been tasked with designing a solution for your company that allows existing corporate network users to obtain temporary credentials to interact with console and programmatic interfaces, streamlining the sign-on process and avoiding separate user management. Which method would you employ to facilitate this?
Create individual IAM users corresponding to each member of the workforce and manage permissions directly.
Integrate the corporate directory with identity federation to assign permissions through temporary security credentials.
Implement a proprietary authentication solution specific to the company's internal systems for granting access.
Distribute long-term security credentials to users for manual configuration of access to the necessary interfaces.
Answer Description
The process of federation involves the integration of an external directory service with IAM roles. By setting up federation, users authenticate with their local credentials on their existing directory system and then receive temporary security credentials to operate on the console or interact with services via APIs or CLI. This method honors the principle of least privilege and simplifies credential management while providing secure access. Manually creating IAM users is redundant and insecure for large enterprise environments. Assigning long-term credentials goes against security best practices, making them a poor choice. Lastly, developing a bespoke authentication portal partial to the corporation's internal system does not use AWS built-in mechanisms for secure access management and is less efficient and potentially less secure.
Ask Bash
Bash is our AI bot, trained to help you pass your exam. AI Generated Content may display inaccurate information, always double-check anything important.
What is identity federation, and how does it work with AWS?
What are temporary security credentials, and why are they important?
What is the principle of least privilege, and how does it apply to AWS?
Your client has an application that is heavily involved in batch processing jobs, which are CPU-bound. These jobs run infrequently but require rapid completion when they do. The client is looking for a cost-effective solution that can handle these sporadic spikes in CPU demand without incurring costs when the instances are idle. Given these requirements, which Amazon EC2 instance option should the client use?
Reserved Instances
Dedicated Hosts
EC2 Spot Instances
On-Demand Instances
Answer Description
The EC2 Spot Instances are an appropriate solution as they can provide the necessary compute power for the batch processing jobs at a significantly reduced cost compared to On-Demand instances. However, because batch jobs can withstand interruptions, Spot Instances are ideal for this scenario - enabling the client to take advantage of the unused EC2 capacity in the AWS cloud at a potentially lower price. Using Reserved Instances may not be cost-effective due to their long-term commitment and potential underutilization during idle periods. On-Demand Instances would provide the required resources but without cost optimization for sporadic use. Finally, Dedicated Hosts are physical servers with EC2 instance capacity fully dedicated to a user's use case and are generally used for specific compliance requirements, not for handling sporadic demand efficiently.
Ask Bash
Bash is our AI bot, trained to help you pass your exam. AI Generated Content may display inaccurate information, always double-check anything important.
What are EC2 Spot Instances and how do they work?
What scenarios are best suited for using Reserved Instances?
What are the advantages of using On-Demand Instances?
Which service is responsible for provisioning, managing, and automating the deployment of secure certificates for encrypted communications?
Certificate Manager
Secrets Manager
Shield
Key Management Service
Inspector
Answer Description
The correct service handles the full lifecycle of SSL/TLS certificates, allowing secure data transmission over the internet. This service integrates with various other services to automate the use of these certificates with resources such as load balancers and content delivery networks without manual intervention from administrators.
Ask Bash
Bash is our AI bot, trained to help you pass your exam. AI Generated Content may display inaccurate information, always double-check anything important.
What are SSL/TLS certificates?
What is the difference between AWS Certificate Manager and Key Management Service?
How does AWS Certificate Manager integrate with other AWS services?
Which service allows an organization to analyze and manage its cloud expenditure over time through detailed reports and forecasts?
Cost and Usage Report
Cost Explorer
Budgets
Trusted Advisor
Answer Description
The correct service for analyzing and managing cloud expenditure with detailed reports and forecasts is Cost Explorer. It is designed to help users visualize spending patterns and make informed decisions. Cost Explorer offers a set of default reports along with capabilities for users to create custom reports, analyze data, and forecast future costs. In contrast, Budgets primarily provides the ability to set custom budget thresholds and receive alerts, but lacks advanced analytical features. The Cost and Usage Report delivers billing data files perfect for complex post-processing and auditing, rather than interactive analysis and visualization. Trusted Advisor checks configurations and gives recommendations across various categories, including cost optimization, but does not provide direct cost analysis and forecast tools.
Ask Bash
Bash is our AI bot, trained to help you pass your exam. AI Generated Content may display inaccurate information, always double-check anything important.
What are some common features of AWS Cost Explorer?
How does AWS Budgets differ from Cost Explorer?
What is the purpose of the Cost and Usage Report in AWS?
An organization has data that is infrequently accessed but requires immediate retrieval when needed. To optimize costs, they should store this data in a storage class designed for long-term archival with retrieval times in hours.
True.
False.
Answer Description
False. For data that is infrequently accessed but requires immediate retrieval when needed, Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) is the appropriate storage class. It offers lower storage costs compared to Amazon S3 Standard while providing the same low latency and high throughput required for immediate access. Storage classes designed for long-term archival, such as Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval or Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive, have retrieval times ranging from minutes to hours, making them unsuitable when immediate retrieval is necessary.
Ask Bash
Bash is our AI bot, trained to help you pass your exam. AI Generated Content may display inaccurate information, always double-check anything important.
What is Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA)?
What are the differences between S3 Standard-IA and S3 Glacier?
What types of data should be stored in S3 Glacier Deep Archive?
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