AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate SAA-C03 Practice Test 95
Question 940
An RDS workload currently pays for a high-performance storage tier, but its transactional IOPS/latency are comfortably within supported gp3 baseline performance. Which storage change may lower cost?
- Switch every RDS engine to gp3 without checking whether the deployment supports it.
- Keep premium provisioned performance forever because lower measured utilization has no cost implication.
- Use an S3 lifecycle rule to directly alter an RDS DB instance's live storage class.
- Evaluate RDS gp3 storage on a supported engine/configuration and verify latency under actual peak load.
Explanation
Correct Answer
D:gp3 can provide suitable baseline performance economically for workloads that do not need expensive provisioned tiers.
Incorrect Answers
A:RDS storage options vary by engine and instance/deployment context.
B:Unused provisioned performance can be a savings opportunity.
C:RDS storage configuration is not managed by ordinary S3 object lifecycle transitions.
Question 941
A development team needs a fresh, isolated copy of an 8-TiB production Aurora PostgreSQL-compatible DB cluster every week to test schema migrations. The clone must be usable quickly, remain independent of production writes, and typically modifies only a small fraction of the data. Restoring a complete separate data volume each time would increase storage and setup cost. What is the most cost-effective supported Aurora approach?
- Create an Aurora DB cluster clone using its copy-on-write storage mechanism, budget for the separate DB instances and changed data pages, and restrict development access to the clone.
- Restore a completely independent 8-TiB snapshot for every test and assume AWS never bills the resulting new cluster storage or compute because it was copied from production.
- Add an Aurora reader instance to the production cluster and run destructive schema experiments on that reader, because reader replicas keep separate independent writable storage.
- Create an Aurora Global Database secondary cluster and run schema experiments there, assuming replicated secondary storage is an isolated independent writable development clone.
Explanation
Correct Answer
A:Aurora cloning initially shares unchanged source storage pages and allocates copy-on-write pages when either cluster changes data. This enables rapid isolated testing with comparatively little initial duplicate storage, though separate clone compute and changed-page storage still cost money.
Incorrect Answers
B:Restoring a full snapshot can create an independent cluster but is not the space-efficient copy-on-write clone requested. New storage and DB instance costs are not automatically waived for full independent restores.
C:Aurora reader instances access their cluster storage and are normally read-only for application transactions; they are not independent writable copies for destructive schema experiments.
D:Aurora Global Database is intended for cross-Region replicated reads and recovery; a normal secondary is not the independent writable copy-on-write test cluster requested, and cross-Region replication is not a substitute for Aurora cloning.
Question 942
A DBA retains hundreds of manual RDS snapshots forever, despite a policy requiring 35 days of daily recovery plus selected annual legal archives. Storage bills rise every month. Which optimization fits?
- Delete every snapshot, including mandatory legal copies, to maximize storage reduction.
- Apply reviewed snapshot lifecycle/retention aligned with the 35-day recovery requirement and the explicitly preserved annual archives.
- Keep all snapshots indefinitely because RDS backup storage is universally free regardless of retained changed data.
- Reduce DB instance RAM as a substitute for cleaning historical snapshot retention.
Explanation
Correct Answer
B:Deleting unneeded snapshots after the authorized retention window controls backup storage without violating legal exceptions.
Incorrect Answers
A:Deleting required legal-retention snapshots may eliminate recoverability and violate compliance obligations. Storage optimization must distinguish disposable backup copies from the recovery points the organization is contractually required to preserve.
C:Manual and excess backup storage can incur charges.
D:Compute size does not remove old snapshot capacity.
Question 943
Two managed database architectures have similar instance hourly rates. One bills more per I/O operation and backup capacity, while the other has a different storage model. A proposal compares only CPU hours. What is needed?
- Select the lower listed compute rate without measuring I/O or backup usage.
- Assume every managed database includes unlimited storage and all requests in its instance price.
- Estimate total DB cost across compute, storage, I/O, snapshots/backup, replication and data transfer using expected workload activity.
- Compare only the number of SQL tables as if it were the billing meter for all managed databases.
Explanation
Correct Answer
C:Database operating bills include workload-specific storage and operation charges beyond the instance line item.
Incorrect Answers
A:Heavy reads/writes and retained data can dominate the real monthly total.
B:Managed database pricing varies by service and deployment, including instance or capacity usage, storage, backups, I/O and data transfer. It is unsafe to assume all of those dimensions are unlimited and bundled into a single instance fee.
D:Table count is not a complete measure of requests, GiB or compute.
Question 944
An ElastiCache cluster retains obsolete cached catalog entries indefinitely. To fit new objects, the team keeps buying larger memory nodes even though old keys are never queried. What cache policy should be reviewed?
- Keep all stale keys forever because a cache uses unlimited memory without billed node capacity.
- Add more cache replicas solely to remove unnecessary historical keys.
- Disable database fallback so outdated keys can never be rebuilt.
- Set appropriate TTL and eviction behavior based on real data freshness and access patterns.
Explanation
Correct Answer
D:Expiring unneeded keys can reduce memory pressure and cache sizing without compromising the durable catalog store.
Incorrect Answers
A:ElastiCache nodes have finite memory and consume paid compute resources. Keeping stale keys indefinitely can force a larger cache fleet or eviction of useful data, increasing cost and potentially degrading the hit ratio.
B:Replicas can multiply memory allocation and do not implement expiry.
C:Loss of fallback increases availability risk without solving cache retention.
Question 945
A small web API is slow because the SQL query lacks an index on a frequently filtered column. The database uses little CPU and memory. Finance proposes a large distributed cache fleet instead of query tuning. What should be tried first?
- Fix the relevant index/query plan and measure latency before committing to a costly cache layer.
- Buy a maximum-size cache cluster immediately even if the only slow query becomes cheap after indexing.
- Remove existing indexes to make the cache hit rate appear higher.
- Move the query traffic into CloudTrail as a distributed SQL cache.
Explanation
Correct Answer
A:A targeted indexing improvement can remove the source bottleneck at lower operational and infrastructure cost.
Incorrect Answers
B:That pays for unnecessary infrastructure and consistency complexity.
C:More expensive database misses worsen the fallback path.
D:Audit logs do not serve application SQL results.
Question 946
A production ElastiCache proposal prices one cache node but requires Multi-AZ failover and a read replica to meet availability targets. Which expense must be included?
- Count only the primary cache node and treat the Multi-AZ replica as free standby capacity until a failover occurs.
- Model all cache primary/replica nodes and their chosen topology, networking and operational charges.
- Enable Multi-AZ automatic failover without provisioning any read replica, while continuing to price a one-node cluster.
- Include an additional replica in the deployment diagram but omit it from the bill because it contains the same cached key data.
Explanation
Correct Answer
B:Price the primary and all required replica nodes or relevant serverless topology, including node hours/region/size and any applicable data transfer and operations. High availability commonly increases billable cache capacity beyond a single-node estimate.
Incorrect Answers
A:Provisioned replication nodes are still running managed infrastructure and incur node charges even when they primarily serve failover.
C:For node-based Redis OSS/Valkey designs, automatic Multi-AZ failover requires a replica in another Availability Zone; one node is not the described HA topology.
D:Replicas consume independently provisioned memory and compute even if their contents replicate a primary, so duplicating data does not make the replica free.
Question 947
Analysts run only a few monthly SQL queries over S3 logs. A proposal builds a permanently running Redshift cluster despite the intermittent ad hoc use. Which service should be evaluated?
- Keep a large always-on warehouse as the only supported mechanism to query S3 data using SQL.
- Use an RDS OLTP instance with unpartitioned full scans and assume it has no compute charges between queries.
- Use Amazon Athena for suitable S3 queries and compare per-scanned-data economics to a standing warehouse.
- Use S3 Glacier Deep Archive objects directly for repeated immediate Athena scans with no retrieval constraints.
Explanation
Correct Answer
C:On-demand SQL over S3 can be economical for intermittent usage without idle dedicated cluster compute.
Incorrect Answers
A:Athena offers managed query options for S3 datasets.
B:Managed DB instances may incur fixed runtime billing and inefficient analytical scans.
D:Archival storage is not the ordinary hot query tier for interactive analytics.
Question 948
An internal scheduling app requires short transactional SQL updates and a few small joins. It has no large analytical history to scan, but management wants a major data warehouse solely because it is 'more scalable.' Which service model fits the actual use?
- Move every OLTP INSERT to a dedicated warehouse solely to eliminate database storage costs.
- Use Athena as the only low-latency mutable transactional record store over S3 objects.
- Use ElastiCache alone as the authoritative durable schedule ledger with no persistence strategy.
- Keep or select a right-sized RDS/Aurora relational transactional database unless measured needs justify a warehouse.
Explanation
Correct Answer
D:OLTP engines support small concurrent transactions and joins without paying for analytical warehouse infrastructure.
Incorrect Answers
A:Warehouses are not universally cheaper or more suitable for small transactional writes.
B:Athena is a query engine for lake data, not a general transactional database server.
C:Cache nodes are not the natural source of truth for required transactions.
Question 949
An analytics team uses Amazon Athena and occasionally submits accidental SELECT * queries that scan several terabytes of a data lake. The security and FinOps teams want individual queries in a designated workgroup to be canceled when scanned data exceeds an approved threshold; they also want optional notifications about the workgroup’s aggregate hourly usage. What should they configure?
- Set an Athena per-query data-scanned limit on the workgroup and, separately, configure workgroup-wide data-usage notification thresholds as needed.
- Set only an aggregate hourly workgroup usage threshold, assuming it automatically cancels each individual query that scans too many bytes.
- Enable Athena query result reuse and assume every new or modified unbounded query avoids a scan regardless of data and query changes.
- Schedule an AWS Glue crawler to update table metadata, which also enforces a hard per-query bytes-scanned limit in Athena.
Explanation
Correct Answer
A:Athena workgroups have a per-query scanned-data control that cancels a query if the threshold is exceeded. Separately, aggregate workgroup data-usage thresholds can publish notifications; these are not the same individual-query control.
Incorrect Answers
B:AWS distinguishes aggregate workgroup thresholds, which can send alerts, from the per-query threshold that causes excessive individual queries to be canceled.
C:Result reuse is conditional on applicable query and result rules. It is not a universal preventive data-scan limit for arbitrary new or changed statements.
D:A Glue crawler helps discover or update catalog metadata. It does not set Athena’s per-query execution control that cancels a scan after it exceeds a defined byte threshold.
Question 950
An ecommerce RDS database has dozens of unbounded manual snapshots but no clear recovery policy. The business requires a point-in-time recovery window and a limited history of clean restore points. What cost-aware practice fits?
- Turn off all automated backups and keep only the latest live DB writer.
- Configure supported automated backups/PITR with approved retention, and prune unnecessary manual snapshots after review.
- Keep every manually created snapshot forever because they consume no additional stored changed blocks.
- Replace PITR with a read replica alone and claim old deleted rows can always be restored from it.
Explanation
Correct Answer
B:Purposeful recovery-point retention meets RPO and historical coverage without indefinite duplicate storage growth.
Incorrect Answers
A:No historical recovery path remains for corruption or accidental deletion.
C:Manual database snapshots can retain changed data blocks and incur backup storage charges beyond any applicable free allowance. Retaining every snapshot without a recovery policy can accumulate unnecessary storage over time.
D:Replicas can propagate unwanted changes and are not a full historical backup mechanism.