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

The application requires independent scaling, ordered asynchronous processing, and relational data storage. Option A provides a microservices-oriented, decoupled architecture using managed services.

Amazon ECS with AWS Fargate enables containerized workloads without server management and allows each component to scale independently. Amazon RDS supports relational data storage for user profiles and content. Amazon SQS ensures reliable, ordered message processing and decouples long-running background tasks, allowing services to evolve independently.

Option B uses SNS, which does not guarantee message ordering. Option C uses DynamoDB, which does not meet the relational data requirement. Option D offers less granular scaling and higher coupling.

Therefore, A best meets scalability, resilience, and modularity requirements.

A DynamoDB gateway VPC endpoint is the most secure and cost-effective option because it allows private access from the VPC to DynamoDB without requiring an internet gateway, NAT gateway, or public IP path. Gateway endpoints for DynamoDB use route table entries to direct traffic to the DynamoDB prefix list over the AWS network. Endpoint policies can further restrict access to only the required DynamoDB tables, which supports least privilege. Interface endpoints are available for DynamoDB, but they add hourly and data processing charges, so they are not the most cost-effective choice when a gateway endpoint satisfies the requirement. VPC peering is not valid because DynamoDB is an AWS managed service, not a customer VPC that can be peered.

AWS documentation states that when Lambda processes events, a dead-letter queue (DLQ) using Amazon SQS is the correct mechanism to capture failed invocations for later reprocessing.

SQS provides durable buffering and decoupling, allowing records to be retried safely without loss.

Kinesis Firehose (Option B) does not support SQL replays or arbitrary replay control. SNS (Option D) is not a durable store. OpenSearch (Option C) is not intended for durable retry queues.

=====================================================

The most effective way to reduce load on the web servers is to move the static video content toAmazon S3and deliver it throughAmazon CloudFront. CloudFront caches content at edge locations so repeated requests are served closer to users without repeatedly hitting the origin. AWS documentation also recommendsorigin access control OACto securely restrict direct access to the S3 origin and allow CloudFront to fetch the objects on behalf of viewers. ElastiCache is not a video-origin service, EFS would still keep the web servers in the delivery path, and File Gateway is for hybrid file access rather than internet content distribution. For high-traffic video delivery with the least origin load, S3 plus CloudFront with OAC is the correct design.

AWS Step Functions can orchestrate Lambda executions without modifying the Lambda code, and the Map state is designed to run a Lambda function once per item in a list—perfect for activating many devices in parallel or controlled batches.

This eliminates the loop inside the Retrieve function and prevents timeouts.

EventBridge (Option A) only changes the schedule. DynamoDB Streams (Option B) is unrelated to the activation workflow. EC2 (Option D) increases operational overhead.

To prevent loss of access to the AWS root user account due to a lost MFA device, AWS recommends enabling multiple MFA devices for the root user.

Multiple MFA Devices: AWS allows up to eight MFA devices (virtual, hardware, or security keys) to be associated with a single root user account. This redundancy ensures that if one device is lost, others can be used to authenticate and access the account.

Security Best Practices: Implementing multiple MFA devices enhances account security and provides resilience against potential access issues.

By proactively setting up multiple MFA devices, the company can maintain uninterrupted access to its critical AWS resources, even in the event of a lost or malfunctioning MFA device.

Amazon EFS provides a shared, elastic, low-latency file system that can be mounted concurrently by many EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones, delivering strong read-after-write consistency so all instances see updates almost immediately. This is the standard pattern for CMS-style workloads that require shared, up-to-date assets with minimal lag. Syncing local copies from S3 (C) introduces polling windows and eventual consistency delays; hourly sync is not near-real time. Copying from a “newest instance” (A) is brittle and not scalable. EBS volumes/snapshots (D) are single-instance, single-AZ block devices and not designed for multi-writer sharing across instances/AZs. EFS’s multi-AZ design and POSIX semantics provide the simplest, most reliable solution with the least operational overhead.

This solution offers the most scalable and cost-effective approach with minimal changes to the existing web portal and no code modifications.

Amazon EC2 On-Demand Instances in an Auto Scaling Group: Running the web portal on EC2 On-Demand instances ensures 100% uptime and scalability. The Auto Scaling group will maintain the desired number of instances, automatically scaling up or down as needed, ensuring high availability for the employee web portal.

AWS Lambda for Document Extraction: Lambda is a serverless compute service that allows you to run code in response to events without provisioning or managing servers. By using Lambda to run the document extraction program, you can trigger the function whenever an employee uploads a document. This approach is cost-effective since you only pay for the compute time used by the Lambda function.

No Code Changes Required: This solution integrates with the existing infrastructure with minimal implementation effort and does not require any modifications to the web portal ' s code.

Why Not Other Options?:

Option B (Spot Instances): Spot Instances are not suitable for workloads requiring 100% uptime, as they can be terminated by AWS with short notice.

Option C (Savings Plan): A Savings Plan could reduce costs but does not address the requirement for running the document extraction program efficiently or without code changes.

Option D (S3 with API Gateway and Lambda): This would require significant changes to the existing web portal setup, including moving the portal to S3 and reconfiguring its architecture, which contradicts the requirement of minimal implementation effort and no code changes.

AWS References:

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling- Information on how to use Auto Scaling for EC2 instances.

AWS Lambda- Overview of AWS Lambda and its use cases.