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

Explanation (AWS Docs):

A: Use Direct Connect with a private VIF to ensure private connectivity from on-premises to AWS.

E: Peer the networking VPC with VPCs in the accounts hosting S3 buckets to allow private routing.

“A private virtual interface enables private connectivity to your VPC.”

— Direct Connect Private VIF

Caching frequently accessed, identical datasets is a well-established way to improve backend application performance by reducing load on the database. Amazon ElastiCache with Redis (open source) offers a fast, in-memory data store to cache query results, reducing latency and database requests.

Option B directly addresses the problem by offloading repeated read requests from the database to the cache.

Option A (SNS) is a messaging service and is unrelated to caching or improving database performance. Option C (DAX) accelerates DynamoDB but the backend uses RDS MySQL, so DAX is inapplicable. Option D (Data Firehose) is a data streaming service and does not optimize database read performance.

AWS VPC endpoints (interface and gateway) allow private connectivity from VPC resources to AWS services without requiring public IP addresses or internet gateways. This ensures applications remain isolated in private subnets while securely accessing AWS services. NAT gateways (B) would allow internet access, which does not meet the security requirement. Internet gateways (C) directly expose traffic to the internet, which violates the isolation requirement. Direct Connect (D) connects on-premises environments to AWS but does not provide service access from private subnets. Therefore, option A — using interface VPC endpoints — is the correct solution.

Amazon API Gateway with CloudFront: API Gateway allows you to create, deploy, and manage APIs, while CloudFront provides a CDN to deliver content with low latency and high transfer speeds.

AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall):

AWS WAF can be configured in CloudFront to protect against common web exploits, including SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS).

WAF allows you to create custom rules to block specific attack patterns and can be managed centrally.

Configuration:

Deploy your APIs using Amazon API Gateway.

Set up an Amazon CloudFront distribution in front of the API Gateway.

Configure AWS WAF on the CloudFront distribution to apply security rules.

Operational Efficiency: This solution provides robust protection with minimal operational overhead by leveraging managed AWS services, ensuring that your APIs are secure without extensive custom implementation.

The requirement is to route users to the nearest AWS Region where the application is deployed. The best solution is to use Amazon Route 53 with a geolocation routing policy, which routes traffic based on the geographic location of the user making the request.

Geolocation Routing: This routing policy ensures that users are directed to the resources (in this case, EC2 instances) that are geographically closest to them, thereby reducing latency and improving the user experience.

Application Load Balancer (ALB): Within each Region, an internet-facing Application Load Balancer (ALB) is used to distribute incoming traffic across multiple EC2 instances in different Availability Zones. ALBs are designed to handle HTTP/HTTPS traffic and provide advanced features like content-based routing, SSL termination, and user authentication.

Why Not Other Options?:

Option B (Geoproximity + NLB): Geoproximity routing is similar but more complex as it requires fine-tuning the proximity settings. A Network Load Balancer (NLB) is better suited for TCP/UDP traffic rather than HTTP/HTTPS.

Option C (Multivalue Answer Routing + ALB): Multivalue answer routing does not direct traffic based on user location but rather returns multiple values and lets the client choose. This does not meet the requirement for geographically routing users.

Option D (Weighted Routing + NLB): Weighted routing splits traffic based on predefined weights and does not consider the user's geographic location. NLB is not ideal for this scenario due to its focus on lower-level protocols.

AWS References:

Amazon Route 53 Routing Policies- Detailed explanation of the various routing policies available in Route 53, including geolocation.

Elastic Load Balancing- Information on the different types of load balancers in AWS and when to use them.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation:

IAM Roles for Service Accounts (IRSA): IRSA allows you to associate an IAM role with a Kubernetes service account. This enables pods to assume the IAM role and access AWS resources securely.

Annotating Service Accounts: By annotating Kubernetes service accounts with the ARN of the IAM role, you establish the association required for IRSA.

OIDC Identity Provider: EKS clusters use OpenID Connect (OIDC) to authenticate service accounts. Setting up a trust relationship between the IAM role and the OIDC provider allows the Kubernetes service account to assume the IAM role.

Amazon FSx for Lustre is the ideal solution for high-performance computing (HPC) workloads that require parallel access to a shared file system with low latency. FSx for Lustre is designed specifically to meet the needs of such workloads, offering sub-millisecond latencies, which makes it well-suited for the 1 ms latency requirement mentioned in the question.

Here is why FSx for Lustre is the best fit:

Parallel File System: FSx for Lustre is a parallel file system that can scale across hundreds of Amazon EC2 instances, providing high throughput and low-latency access to data. It is optimized for processing large datasets in parallel, which is essential for HPC workloads.

Low Latency: FSx for Lustre is capable of providing access latencies well within 1 ms, making it ideal for performance-sensitive workloads like HPC.

Seamless Integration with Amazon S3: FSx for Lustre can be linked to an Amazon S3 bucket. This integration allows data to be imported from S3 into FSx for Lustre before the workload begins and exported back to S3 after processing. This feature is crucial for manual postprocessing because it enables engineers to access the dataset in S3 after processing.

Performance: FSx for Lustre is built for workloads that require high performance, such as machine learning, analytics, media processing, and financial simulations, which are typical for HPC environments.

In contrast:

Amazon EFS (Option A): While EFS provides shared file storage and scales across multiple EC2 instances, it does not offer the same level of performance or sub-millisecond latencies as FSx for Lustre. EFS is more suited for general-purpose workloads, not high-performance computing.

Mounting S3 as a file system (Option B and D): S3 is object storage, not a file system designed for low-latency access and parallel processing. Mounting S3 buckets directly or using AWS Resource Access Manager to share the bucket would not meet the low-latency (1 ms) or performance requirements needed for HPC workloads.

Therefore, Amazon FSx for Lustre (Option C) is the most appropriate and verified solution for this scenario.

AWS References:

Amazon FSx for Lustre

Best Practices for High Performance Computing (HPC)

Amazon FSx and Amazon S3 Integration

TheAWS WAF Bot Control managed ruleis designed to automatically detect and mitigate bot traffic. This feature is particularly useful for addressing malicious traffic and conserving compute resources by filtering unnecessary requests at the ALB level.

Option A:Blocking IP addresses manually introduces significant operational overhead and is not scalable against dynamic, worldwide malicious traffic.

Option C:AWS Shield provides DDoS protection, but the scenario does not describe a DDoS attack. WAF is better suited for managing application-layer threats like bot traffic.

Option D:The AWS WAF IP reputation rule helps block traffic from known bad IPs but may not address bot traffic effectively.

AWS Documentation References:

AWS WAF Bot Control

AWS WAF Managed Rules