SAA-C03 Exam Dumps - AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03)

The requirement is for workloads inside a VPC to resolve private DNS names that are hosted on-premises over a VPN connection. The most secure and AWS-recommended method to achieve this is to use Amazon Route 53 Resolver outbound endpoints with forwarding rules.

Option A enables DNS queries that originate in the VPC to be securely forwarded to on-premises DNS servers through the VPN connection. A Route 53 Resolver outbound endpoint provides elastic, managed DNS forwarding capability without exposing DNS services to the public internet. By creating a Resolver rule, the company can define which domain names (for example, internal corporate domains) should be forwarded to specific on-premises DNS IP addresses. Associating the rule with the VPC ensures only authorized VPCs can use this resolution path.

Option B is used for the opposite scenario: when on-premises systems need to resolve private DNS names hosted in AWS, not when AWS needs to resolve on-premises names. Option C is invalid because Route 53 private hosted zones can only be associated with VPCs, not directly with on-premises networks. Option D is insecure because it exposes internal service records publicly and violates the requirement for private DNS.

Therefore, A is the most secure solution because it keeps DNS resolution private, uses managed AWS infrastructure, integrates cleanly with VPN connectivity, and follows AWS hybrid DNS best practices.

S3 Object Lock in Compliance Mode prevents objects from being deleted or overwritten for a fixed, specified retention period. Compliance Mode is specifically designed to meet regulatory requirements, ensuring that no user, including the root user, can modify or delete the object during the retention period.

Reference Extract:

" S3 Object Lock in compliance mode protects objects from being deleted or overwritten during the specified retention period, helping meet regulatory retention requirements. "

Source: AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Official Study Guide, S3 Object Lock and Compliance section.

AWS Transfer Family: This service provides fully managed support for file transfers directly into and out of Amazon S3 using the SFTP, FTPS, and FTP protocols.

SFTP Endpoints:

Set up an AWS Transfer Family server and configure SFTP endpoints to handle the file transfers.

This service is scalable and managed, reducing operational overhead compared to running an SFTP solution on EC2 instances.

Integration with Active Directory:

Choose the AWS Directory Service option as the identity provider for the Transfer Family server.

Use AD Connector to link the on-premises Active Directory with AWS, allowing employees to use their existing AD credentials to access the SFTP service.

Operational Efficiency: This solution leverages managed services for both file transfer and identity management, ensuring minimal changes to the current authentication mechanisms and reducing operational overhead.

Aurora global database is specifically designed for cross-Region disaster recovery and low-latency global reads.

It provides:

Physical storage-level replication between Regions, typically with lag of under 1 second, easily satisfying RPO 1 minute.

Fast cross-Region failover capabilities, often within minutes or less, which meets the RTO 5 minutes requirement.

You configure the primary Region as the writer cluster and additional Regions (such as us-west-1) as secondary clusters with reader endpoints. In a disaster, you promote the secondary to be the new writer.

Why others are not correct:

A: Standard cross-Region read replicas for Aurora PostgreSQL do not provide automatic multi-Region failover with the same guarantees as Aurora global database and may not meet strict RTO/RPO requirements.

C: Logical replication and custom EventBridge failover is complex, error-prone, and higher overhead compared to the managed global database feature.

D: Restoring from snapshots plus cross-Region replication is too slow to meet RTO 5 minutes and certainly cannot maintain RPO 1 minute.

The key issue is repeated reads of identical data from an RDS MySQL database, which leads to unnecessary database load and degraded performance. The AWS-recommended solution for this pattern is to introduce an in-memory cache between the application and the database.

Amazon ElastiCache (Redis OSS) is purpose-built for caching frequently accessed data with microsecond-level latency. By caching identical query results, the backend EC2 instances can serve responses directly from memory instead of repeatedly querying the database. This significantly reduces read pressure on the RDS instance and improves overall application performance and scalability.

Option B is correct because Redis integrates cleanly with EC2-based applications and supports advanced caching patterns such as key expiration, eviction policies, and fine-grained control over cached objects. This approach also improves resilience during traffic spikes by offloading work from the database.

Option A is incorrect because SNS is a messaging service and does not cache or accelerate database queries. Option C is incorrect because DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) works only with DynamoDB tables, not Amazon RDS. Option D is designed for streaming data ingestion and analytics, not for optimizing synchronous database access.

Therefore, B is the correct solution because it addresses the root cause of the performance problem by caching repeated database reads, following AWS best practices for high-performing application architectures.

Amazon QuickSight includes built-in ML-powered forecasting capabilities, allowing you to create, visualize, and interact with time series forecasts directly within the BI dashboard, with no ML experience or infrastructure management required. This is the lowest management overhead solution.

AWS Documentation Extract:

" Amazon QuickSight provides built-in ML-powered forecasting, allowing business users to forecast future trends with a few clicks and no machine learning expertise required. "

(Source: Amazon QuickSight documentation)

A, C, D: Require additional setup, management, or ML knowledge.

To allocate costs based on team ownership, AWS recommends tagging resources using cost allocation tags. Activating the “owner” tag as a cost allocation tag allows AWS Cost Explorer to categorize and group spending. Additionally, filtering for Amazon ECS services enables the visibility into service-specific usage. This approach is both scalable and operationally efficient.

AWS Lambda SnapStart is designed to improve the cold start performance of Java Lambda functions by initializing the function, taking a snapshot of the execution environment, and then reusing that snapshot for subsequent invocations. However, some code (such as code that generates unique IDs or session-specific data) should run during each invocation, not during the snapshot process. By using a pre-snapshot hook and moving the unique ID generation into the handler, you ensure that non-deterministic or per-invocation code is executed correctly, while the rest of the initialization benefits from SnapStart. This delivers the lowest latency and cost, as you do not need to pay for provisioned concurrency.

AWS Documentation Extract:

" Lambda SnapStart is ideal for Java functions with long cold starts due to heavy initialization. Move non-deterministic code such as unique ID generation to the handler, and use pre-snapshot hooks to customize what gets snapshotted. SnapStart works only for published versions, not $LATEST. "

(Source: AWS Lambda documentation, Using SnapStart for Java Functions)

Other options:

A: SnapStart is not supported for the $LATEST version; must be a published version.

B & C: Provisioned concurrency removes cold starts but is more expensive than SnapStart for most workloads.

C: You must use SnapStart on published versions, but provisioned concurrency is not required for SnapStart and adds cost.