AWS CERTIFIED SOLUTIONS ARCHITECT EXAM– QUESTIONS
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1. A solutions architect is designing a mission-critical web application that requires high
availability across multiple Availability Zones within a single AWS Region. Which design
choice best fulfills this requirement natively?
A. Deploying Amazon EC2 instances in a single Availability Zone and configuring AWS
Backup to take hourly snapshots.
B. Deploying an Application Load Balancer across multiple subnets in different
Availability Zones routing traffic to Auto Scaling groups of EC2 instances spanning the
same zones.
C. Provisioning a single large Amazon EC2 instance behind a Classic Load Balancer with
manual DNS failover configured via Route 53.
D. Deploying Amazon EC2 instances in multiple regions and using an Amazon CloudFront
distribution for regional failover.
An Application Load Balancer combined with an Auto Scaling group distributed across
multiple Availability Zones provides automatic fault tolerance and high availability. If one AZ
fails, the load balancer automatically routes traffic to instances in the healthy zones.
2. A financial institution needs to store transactional records that must remain
unchangeable and unmodifiable for a compliance period of seven years. Which Amazon S3
feature should the solutions architect implement to enforce this requirement?
A. S3 Lifecycle policies with expiration rules set to seven years.
B. S3 Object Versioning combined with standard IAM bucket policies denying delete
permissions.
C. S3 Object Lock configured in compliance mode.
D. S3 Cross-Region Replication with encryption enabled.
S3 Object Lock in compliance mode prevents objects from being deleted or overwritten by any
user, including the root account, for the specified retention period, satisfying strict regulatory
compliance standards.
,3. An enterprise company runs a monolithic relational database on Amazon RDS for
PostgreSQL that is experiencing performance bottlenecks due to a high volume of read
queries. The write workload remains relatively low. What is the most operationally
efficient architectural adjustment to scale read performance?
A. Migrate the database cluster to Amazon DynamoDB to take advantage of global tables and
on-demand scaling.
B. Create one or more Amazon RDS Read Replicas in different Availability Zones and
direct read-only traffic to those endpoints.
C. Implement a multi-region deployment with active-active RDS instances synchronized via
custom application logic.
D. Upgrade the primary database instance class to the largest available memory-optimized
instance type.
Amazon RDS Read Replicas offload read-heavy database traffic from the primary master
database by asynchronously replicating data, which directly addresses read performance
bottlenecks with minimal application refactoring.
4. A multinational organization needs to securely connect its on-premises corporate
datacenter to an Amazon VPC. The connection must handle high throughput workloads,
bypass the public internet, and maintain a dedicated, private network link. Which AWS
service should the architect select?
A. AWS Site-to-Site VPN over the public internet with redundant tunnels.
B. AWS Client VPN endpoint configured for individual developer access.
C. AWS Direct Connect dedicated network connection.
D. Amazon API Gateway with mutual TLS authentication.
AWS Direct Connect establishes a dedicated private network connection from an on-premises
datacenter to AWS, providing higher throughput, lower latency, and bypassing the public
internet entirely.
5. A development team wants to deploy serverless microservices using containers without
managing underlying virtual machine clusters, node provisioning, or scaling
infrastructure. Which AWS service best fits these operational constraints?
A. Amazon Elastic Container Service on Amazon EC2.
B. Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service with self-managed node groups.
,C. AWS Fargate with Amazon ECS or Amazon EKS.
D. Amazon Lightsail container services.
AWS Fargate is a serverless compute engine for containers that allows teams to run
containers without managing servers or clusters, scaling compute capacity automatically
based on task definitions.
6. A security audit reveals that certain IAM users have excessive administrative privileges.
The security team wants to enforce the principle of least privilege across all AWS accounts
within an enterprise organization. Which tool should they use to automatically analyze
existing policies and generate refined, least-privilege IAM policies based on actual service
usage?
A. AWS Trusted Advisor security checks.
B. IAM Access Analyzer and policy generation based on CloudTrail logs.
C. Amazon GuardDuty anomalous behavior detection.
D. AWS Shield Advanced threat analytics.
IAM Access Analyzer reviews AWS CloudTrail activity logs to generate fine-grained IAM
policies reflecting actual service permissions used, helping administrators enforce the
principle of least privilege.
7. A media streaming company needs to deliver high-definition video content globally with
minimal latency. The origin assets are stored in an Amazon S3 bucket. Which architectural
pattern should the solutions architect deploy?
A. Store all video files on local Amazon EBS volumes attached to EC2 instances in every target
region.
B. Route all global user requests directly to the primary S3 bucket using Amazon Route 53
latency-based routing.
C. Use Amazon CloudFront with the S3 bucket as the origin, leveraging edge locations to
cache content closer to viewers.
D. Configure Cross-Region Replication of the S3 bucket to every global region and serve
content directly from regional buckets.
Amazon CloudFront is a global content delivery network that caches content at edge locations
worldwide, drastically reducing latency and offloading traffic from the central S3 origin
bucket.
, 8. An e-commerce platform experiences massive, unpredictable traffic spikes during flash
sales. The backend processing relies on stateless application servers. What is the most cost-
effective and resilient architecture to handle these dynamic fluctuations?
A. Provision a static fleet of peak-capacity Amazon EC2 instances running 24/7.
B. Implement an Auto Scaling group with target tracking scaling policies tied to CPU
utilization or request count metrics behind an Application Load Balancer.
C. Use AWS Lambda functions triggered directly by client requests without caching layers.
D. Deploy the application on a single oversized bare-metal EC2 instance.
Auto Scaling groups dynamically adjust compute capacity up or down based on real-time
metrics, ensuring optimal resource utilization and cost efficiency without manual intervention
during spikes.
9. A compliance mandate requires all data stored in Amazon EBS volumes to be encrypted
at rest using keys managed by the organization. Which configuration should the solutions
architect choose when creating a new encrypted volume?
A. Use the default AWS managed key (`aws/ebs`).
B. Create a custom Customer Managed Key (CMK) in AWS Key Management Service
(KMS) and select it during volume creation.
C. Encrypt the file system at the operating system level using third-party software before
attaching the EBS volume.
D. Rely on automatic client-side encryption scripts executed via user data upon instance launch.
Using a Customer Managed Key in AWS KMS provides full control over key rotation, access
policies, and auditing, satisfying strict organizational encryption governance requirements.
10. An application running on Amazon EC2 instances needs to securely read configuration
parameters and secure strings, such as database credentials, without hardcoding them into
source code or environment files. Which service should be used?
A. Amazon S3 bucket with public read access disabled.
B. AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store or AWS Secrets Manager.
C. Amazon DynamoDB global tables.
D. AWS CloudTrail log analysis.
AND ANSWERS | VERIFIED AND WELL DETAILED ANSWERS
PLUS RATIONALES | GUARANTEED PASS | LATEST EXAM
UPDATE | EXAM PREP | STUDY GUIDE | PRACTICE TEST|
DOWNLOAD INSTANT PDF
1. A solutions architect is designing a mission-critical web application that requires high
availability across multiple Availability Zones within a single AWS Region. Which design
choice best fulfills this requirement natively?
A. Deploying Amazon EC2 instances in a single Availability Zone and configuring AWS
Backup to take hourly snapshots.
B. Deploying an Application Load Balancer across multiple subnets in different
Availability Zones routing traffic to Auto Scaling groups of EC2 instances spanning the
same zones.
C. Provisioning a single large Amazon EC2 instance behind a Classic Load Balancer with
manual DNS failover configured via Route 53.
D. Deploying Amazon EC2 instances in multiple regions and using an Amazon CloudFront
distribution for regional failover.
An Application Load Balancer combined with an Auto Scaling group distributed across
multiple Availability Zones provides automatic fault tolerance and high availability. If one AZ
fails, the load balancer automatically routes traffic to instances in the healthy zones.
2. A financial institution needs to store transactional records that must remain
unchangeable and unmodifiable for a compliance period of seven years. Which Amazon S3
feature should the solutions architect implement to enforce this requirement?
A. S3 Lifecycle policies with expiration rules set to seven years.
B. S3 Object Versioning combined with standard IAM bucket policies denying delete
permissions.
C. S3 Object Lock configured in compliance mode.
D. S3 Cross-Region Replication with encryption enabled.
S3 Object Lock in compliance mode prevents objects from being deleted or overwritten by any
user, including the root account, for the specified retention period, satisfying strict regulatory
compliance standards.
,3. An enterprise company runs a monolithic relational database on Amazon RDS for
PostgreSQL that is experiencing performance bottlenecks due to a high volume of read
queries. The write workload remains relatively low. What is the most operationally
efficient architectural adjustment to scale read performance?
A. Migrate the database cluster to Amazon DynamoDB to take advantage of global tables and
on-demand scaling.
B. Create one or more Amazon RDS Read Replicas in different Availability Zones and
direct read-only traffic to those endpoints.
C. Implement a multi-region deployment with active-active RDS instances synchronized via
custom application logic.
D. Upgrade the primary database instance class to the largest available memory-optimized
instance type.
Amazon RDS Read Replicas offload read-heavy database traffic from the primary master
database by asynchronously replicating data, which directly addresses read performance
bottlenecks with minimal application refactoring.
4. A multinational organization needs to securely connect its on-premises corporate
datacenter to an Amazon VPC. The connection must handle high throughput workloads,
bypass the public internet, and maintain a dedicated, private network link. Which AWS
service should the architect select?
A. AWS Site-to-Site VPN over the public internet with redundant tunnels.
B. AWS Client VPN endpoint configured for individual developer access.
C. AWS Direct Connect dedicated network connection.
D. Amazon API Gateway with mutual TLS authentication.
AWS Direct Connect establishes a dedicated private network connection from an on-premises
datacenter to AWS, providing higher throughput, lower latency, and bypassing the public
internet entirely.
5. A development team wants to deploy serverless microservices using containers without
managing underlying virtual machine clusters, node provisioning, or scaling
infrastructure. Which AWS service best fits these operational constraints?
A. Amazon Elastic Container Service on Amazon EC2.
B. Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service with self-managed node groups.
,C. AWS Fargate with Amazon ECS or Amazon EKS.
D. Amazon Lightsail container services.
AWS Fargate is a serverless compute engine for containers that allows teams to run
containers without managing servers or clusters, scaling compute capacity automatically
based on task definitions.
6. A security audit reveals that certain IAM users have excessive administrative privileges.
The security team wants to enforce the principle of least privilege across all AWS accounts
within an enterprise organization. Which tool should they use to automatically analyze
existing policies and generate refined, least-privilege IAM policies based on actual service
usage?
A. AWS Trusted Advisor security checks.
B. IAM Access Analyzer and policy generation based on CloudTrail logs.
C. Amazon GuardDuty anomalous behavior detection.
D. AWS Shield Advanced threat analytics.
IAM Access Analyzer reviews AWS CloudTrail activity logs to generate fine-grained IAM
policies reflecting actual service permissions used, helping administrators enforce the
principle of least privilege.
7. A media streaming company needs to deliver high-definition video content globally with
minimal latency. The origin assets are stored in an Amazon S3 bucket. Which architectural
pattern should the solutions architect deploy?
A. Store all video files on local Amazon EBS volumes attached to EC2 instances in every target
region.
B. Route all global user requests directly to the primary S3 bucket using Amazon Route 53
latency-based routing.
C. Use Amazon CloudFront with the S3 bucket as the origin, leveraging edge locations to
cache content closer to viewers.
D. Configure Cross-Region Replication of the S3 bucket to every global region and serve
content directly from regional buckets.
Amazon CloudFront is a global content delivery network that caches content at edge locations
worldwide, drastically reducing latency and offloading traffic from the central S3 origin
bucket.
, 8. An e-commerce platform experiences massive, unpredictable traffic spikes during flash
sales. The backend processing relies on stateless application servers. What is the most cost-
effective and resilient architecture to handle these dynamic fluctuations?
A. Provision a static fleet of peak-capacity Amazon EC2 instances running 24/7.
B. Implement an Auto Scaling group with target tracking scaling policies tied to CPU
utilization or request count metrics behind an Application Load Balancer.
C. Use AWS Lambda functions triggered directly by client requests without caching layers.
D. Deploy the application on a single oversized bare-metal EC2 instance.
Auto Scaling groups dynamically adjust compute capacity up or down based on real-time
metrics, ensuring optimal resource utilization and cost efficiency without manual intervention
during spikes.
9. A compliance mandate requires all data stored in Amazon EBS volumes to be encrypted
at rest using keys managed by the organization. Which configuration should the solutions
architect choose when creating a new encrypted volume?
A. Use the default AWS managed key (`aws/ebs`).
B. Create a custom Customer Managed Key (CMK) in AWS Key Management Service
(KMS) and select it during volume creation.
C. Encrypt the file system at the operating system level using third-party software before
attaching the EBS volume.
D. Rely on automatic client-side encryption scripts executed via user data upon instance launch.
Using a Customer Managed Key in AWS KMS provides full control over key rotation, access
policies, and auditing, satisfying strict organizational encryption governance requirements.
10. An application running on Amazon EC2 instances needs to securely read configuration
parameters and secure strings, such as database credentials, without hardcoding them into
source code or environment files. Which service should be used?
A. Amazon S3 bucket with public read access disabled.
B. AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store or AWS Secrets Manager.
C. Amazon DynamoDB global tables.
D. AWS CloudTrail log analysis.
