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Free SAP-C03 practice test: 30 questions with answers
30 original questions for AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional (updated), drawn from every topic area. Answer each one to see whether you got it right and why. No sign-up.
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All 30 SAP-C03 questions with answers
The same questions as the test above, grouped by exam topic. Open any question to see the answer and explanation.
Design for New Solutions (8 questions)
Question 1
A global application requires a recovery time objective of under one minute and a recovery point objective of near zero for its relational database across two Regions. Which design best meets these targets?
- AA nightly logical export to Amazon S3 with a manual restore step
- BA single-AZ RDS instance with hourly backups kept for 7 days
- CAmazon Aurora Global Database with a secondary Region and managed failover
- DA daily snapshot copied to a second Region, restored on demand
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Correct answer: CAurora Global Database replicates with typically sub-second lag and supports fast cross-Region failover, which fits a strict RTO and near-zero RPO. Daily snapshots or nightly exports give RPOs of many hours, and a single-AZ instance has no regional failover.
Question 2
A company is building a web application that must keep sessions available if one Availability Zone fails, with no code change to the application. Which combination meets this requirement?
- AA single vertically scaled instance type such as r6i.8xlarge with a larger EBS gp3 volume and provisioned IOPS for session state kept on the local disk of that host
- BStoring session data in the local memory of each web server process, with the in-memory cache replicated on a best-effort basis across instances during routine scale-in events
- CAn Application Load Balancer across at least two AZs with an Auto Scaling group spanning those AZs and sessions stored in ElastiCache or DynamoDB
- DSticky sessions enabled on the target group with a fixed duration, pinning each client to a single instance in one AZ at a time
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Correct answer: CSpreading the load balancer and Auto Scaling group across AZs and moving session state to a shared store keeps sessions available when an AZ is lost. Pinning sessions to one instance or keeping them in memory loses them with that instance, and a larger single instance is still a single failure point.
Question 3
A solution must ingest millions of clickstream events per second, keep them for replay for seven days, and feed several independent consumers. Which AWS service is most appropriate for the ingestion layer?
- AAWS Backup
- BAmazon Simple Email Service
- CAmazon Route 53
- DAmazon Kinesis Data Streams
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Correct answer: DKinesis Data Streams ingests high-volume streams with configurable retention, and multiple consumers can read the same records independently. SES sends email, Route 53 is DNS, and AWS Backup manages backups rather than event streams.
Question 4
Which Amazon S3 feature protects against accidental or malicious deletion of object versions by requiring an additional authentication step for permanent deletion?
- AS3 Transfer Acceleration for uploads
- BMFA Delete on a versioned bucket
- CS3 Select to query object contents
- DS3 Intelligent-Tiering by access pattern
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Correct answer: BMFA Delete requires an authenticated MFA code before versions can be permanently deleted or versioning can be suspended. Transfer Acceleration speeds uploads, Intelligent-Tiering moves objects between access tiers, and S3 Select queries object contents.
Question 5
A company needs private connectivity from its data center to AWS at 10 Gbps with consistent latency, and wants a backup path if the link fails. Which design is most appropriate?
- AA Snowball Edge device shipped by courier every week for batch uploads into Amazon S3
- BA single 1 Gbps internet connection with a public IP address and static routes over the shared path
- CTwo AWS Direct Connect connections in separate locations with a Site-to-Site VPN as a backup
- DA Site-to-Site VPN over the internet with no dedicated link and IPsec tunnels
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Correct answer: CDirect Connect provides dedicated private bandwidth with more consistent latency, and a Site-to-Site VPN over the internet works as a lower-bandwidth failover. A plain internet link lacks the performance and consistency, and shipping devices is offline transfer rather than connectivity.
Question 6
Which configuration allows an application in a private subnet to download operating system updates from the internet without allowing inbound connections from the internet?
- AA security group rule that allows all inbound traffic from 0.0.0.0/0
- BAn internet gateway attached to the private subnet route table with a public IP on each instance
- CA VPC peering connection to the default VPC
- DA NAT gateway in a public subnet with a route from the private subnet route table to it
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Correct answer: DA NAT gateway in a public subnet lets private instances initiate outbound connections, and it does not accept unsolicited inbound connections. An internet gateway route with public IPs exposes instances, peering does not reach the internet, and an inbound rule opens them to everyone.
Question 7
A company wants to run containerized microservices with minimal cluster administration, and needs each service to scale independently. Which compute option fits best?
- AAmazon ECS on AWS Fargate
- BA single large EC2 instance with manual Docker commands
- CAWS Lambda for long-running services with 15-minute runtimes
- DBare-metal servers in a colocation facility
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Correct answer: AECS on Fargate runs containers without managing servers and scales each service independently. Manual Docker on one instance and colocation servers add administration, and Lambda is not designed for long-running services.
Question 8
An application stores millions of small JSON documents and needs single-digit millisecond reads at any scale with no server management. Which service is most appropriate?
- AAmazon Timestream for LiveAnalytics
- BAmazon Redshift
- CAmazon Neptune
- DAmazon DynamoDB
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Correct answer: DDynamoDB is a managed key-value and document database with consistent low-latency access at scale. Redshift is an analytical warehouse, Neptune is a graph database, and Timestream is for time-series data.
Design for Organizational Complexity (8 questions)
Question 9
A company has 80 AWS accounts managed by separate teams. The security team needs a guardrail that prevents any member account from disabling AWS CloudTrail, regardless of the permissions granted inside the account. Which mechanism should be used?
- AAn AWS Config rule with a Lambda remediation action that re-enables trail logging after it has been turned off by a user
- BA service control policy attached to the organization root or relevant OU that denies cloudtrail:StopLogging and cloudtrail:DeleteTrail
- CAn IAM policy attached to every developer role in each member account, which administrators can still edit or detach
- DA resource-based policy on the CloudTrail S3 bucket that denies s3:DeleteObject for non-security principals, leaving the trail settings unrestricted
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Correct answer: BService control policies set the maximum permissions for accounts in an organization, so a deny in an SCP cannot be overridden by IAM grants inside a member account. Per-account IAM policies can be edited by administrators, a bucket policy does not stop the trail from being stopped, and a Config rule only detects changes after the fact.
Question 10
A company wants newly created accounts to receive a standard baseline of networking, logging and guardrails automatically, and wants a single dashboard for compliance across the organization. Which service is the best fit?
- AAWS Control Tower with account factory and guardrails
- BAWS Batch with managed compute environments per linked account
- CAmazon WorkSpaces with a shared Windows desktop image bundle
- DAWS Snow Family devices for offline account provisioning
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Correct answer: AControl Tower provisions landing zone accounts with a baseline, applies preventive and detective guardrails, and provides a compliance dashboard. AWS Batch runs batch jobs, WorkSpaces provides virtual desktops, and Snow Family is for offline data transfer.
Question 11
Which two approaches let a central networking team share subnets and connect many VPCs across accounts while keeping routing centrally managed? (Choose two.)
- AAWS Resource Access Manager to share subnets from a networking account
- BAWS Transit Gateway shared through AWS Resource Access Manager
- CPeering every VPC to every other VPC with individual route tables
- DCreating a separate Elastic IP per instance in each account
- EDeploying a NAT instance in each VPC for all inbound traffic
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Correct answer: A, BAWS RAM can share VPC subnets with other accounts in the organization, and Transit Gateway can be shared with RAM to attach VPCs centrally. Full-mesh peering scales poorly and is hard to govern, and per-instance Elastic IPs or NAT instances do not solve central connectivity.
Question 12
A financial company requires that all data in S3 buckets be encrypted with keys that the company can disable, rotate and audit, and that AWS staff cannot access the plaintext. Which approach best fits?
- AClient-side encryption before upload, with the data keys stored as metadata in the same bucket
- BServer-side encryption with customer managed KMS keys and a key policy that limits use to authorized roles
- CStoring the objects in plaintext without server-side encryption, relying on bucket policies and IAM conditions to limit access
- DDefault SSE-S3 encryption, whereby Amazon S3 holds the keys and rotation is handled by AWS
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Correct answer: BCustomer managed KMS keys let the company control rotation, disablement and key policy, and CloudTrail records key use for audit. Service-managed keys give the company less direct control, keys stored beside the data defeat the purpose, and unencrypted storage fails the requirement.
Question 13
A company uses several AWS accounts for different business units. Each unit needs to access a shared Amazon S3 bucket in the central account, but only specific prefixes. Which approach follows least privilege across accounts?
- AA bucket policy in the central account that grants the specific role ARNs from each unit access to only their prefix
- BSharing one IAM user's long-term access keys with each business unit's application servers in config files
- CCopying the shared data into each account nightly and granting full S3 access to local admins there
- DMaking the bucket public to every AWS account in the organization with a read-only bucket policy for s3:GetObject and s3:ListBucket
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Correct answer: AA bucket policy that names specific cross-account roles and limits access to their prefixes grants exactly the required access. Public access and shared keys exceed what is needed, and copying data creates unmanaged duplicates.
Question 14
A company wants developers in member accounts to use their corporate identity provider for console and CLI access, with permissions mapped to job functions across all accounts. Which approach is recommended?
- AAWS IAM Identity Center with a permission set per job function assigned to accounts through the organization
- BCreating IAM users with long-term access keys in every account and attaching inline policies
- CSharing the root user credentials of each account with the entire team through a shared password manager vault that is reused
- DUsing a single access key stored in a shared wiki page that the development team can edit
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Correct answer: AIAM Identity Center federates the corporate identity provider and assigns permission sets across accounts centrally, with temporary credentials. IAM users with long-term keys, shared root credentials and wiki-stored keys all violate least privilege and credential hygiene.
Question 15
A hybrid application needs its on-premises Active Directory to authenticate users for an Amazon RDS for SQL Server database and for Windows workloads in AWS. Which approach best meets this need?
- AInstalling a new domain controller in every subnet with no site replication
- BAWS Directory Service with a trust relationship to the on-premises Active Directory
- CMoving the directory user accounts to a local SAM database on each EC2 instance and syncing passwords
- DDisabling Kerberos authentication for the SQL Server database and falling back to NTLM logins
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Correct answer: BAWS Managed Microsoft AD or AD Connector with a forest trust lets AWS resources use the existing directory. Ad hoc domain controllers without replication, local user databases and disabled Kerberos each break centralized authentication.
Question 16
An enterprise wants to restrict the Regions in which developers can create resources in any account of its organization, with an exception for one approved Region used for disaster recovery. Which control achieves this?
- AAn S3 bucket policy in each account that lists the allowed Regions and restricts bucket creation to those Regions, deployed to each member account through a CloudFormation StackSet
- BA service control policy that denies actions outside the approved Regions using the aws:RequestedRegion condition key, with a global services exemption
- CA security group attached to each EC2 instance that blocks traffic from other Regions, with ingress rules scoped to the approved CIDR ranges of the VPC peers in each account
- DA tag on each resource that names its Region, set through an AWS Organizations tag policy and read by cost allocation reports so that finance teams can group spend by team
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Correct answer: BSCPs with an aws:RequestedRegion condition deny API calls outside the allowed list across the organization, and global services must be exempted. Security groups filter network traffic, bucket policies protect data access, and tags do not enforce Region placement.
Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions (7 questions)
Question 17
A company's production web tier costs more than expected. Traffic peaks for two hours each day and is low otherwise. Which change most directly reduces cost without degrading peak performance?
- AReplace the Application Load Balancer and Auto Scaling group with a single large instance in one subnet behind a fixed Elastic IP address for the web tier
- BDisable CloudWatch metrics collection and alarms on the web tier's Auto Scaling group to reduce monitoring costs during business hours
- CRun the maximum peak capacity around the clock on fixed-size On-Demand instances with no scaling policy
- DUse an Auto Scaling group with target tracking on CPU or request count, and purchase Savings Plans for the baseline capacity
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Correct answer: DTarget tracking scales capacity with demand, and Savings Plans or Reserved Instances cover the steady baseline at lower rates. Running peak capacity all day wastes money, a single instance removes resilience, and disabling metrics prevents scaling decisions.
Question 18
An operations team wants to be alerted when a production EC2 instance's CPU utilization stays above 90 percent for 15 minutes and to automatically invoke a runbook. Which combination meets this requirement?
- AA CloudWatch alarm on the metric that publishes to an SNS topic, with Systems Manager Automation or EventBridge invoking the runbook
- BA VPC Flow Log on the instance's network interface that captures accepted traffic and CPU metrics every minute
- CAn AWS Config rule that records configuration history for each EC2 instance, retaining snapshots of the instance type and tags in the configuration timeline
- DAn S3 lifecycle rule that transitions exported CPU utilization datapoints from the metric archive to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 30 days of idle time
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Correct answer: ACloudWatch alarms evaluate metrics over periods and can notify SNS, and EventBridge or Systems Manager Automation can run a runbook in response. AWS Config tracks configuration, Flow Logs capture network traffic, and lifecycle rules manage object storage.
Question 19
A company needs to know which IAM roles and access keys have not been used in the last 90 days across all accounts, to remove unused permissions. Which feature provides this with the least effort?
- AAWS Shield Advanced for DDoS protection on CloudFront, ALB and Route 53
- BAmazon Macie sensitive data discovery and classification in S3
- CIAM Access Analyzer unused access findings and IAM last-accessed information
- DAWS Trusted Advisor cost optimization checks for idle load balancers and idle EBS volumes
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Correct answer: CIAM last-accessed information and unused access findings in Access Analyzer show when roles and keys were last used, which supports least-privilege cleanup. Trusted Advisor cost checks, Macie discovery of sensitive data and Shield protection do not report unused permissions.
Question 20
A team wants to detect configuration drift across hundreds of resources and report non-compliant resources against company rules. Which service should be used?
- AAWS Storage Gateway for hybrid file access with cached volumes
- BAmazon Connect contact center for voice calls
- CAWS Config with conformance packs or managed rules
- DAWS Migration Hub for tracking application migration waves
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Correct answer: CAWS Config records configuration state and evaluates resources against managed or custom rules, and conformance packs group them for reporting. Migration Hub tracks migrations, Connect is a contact center, and Storage Gateway provides hybrid storage.
Question 21
A company's bills rose sharply after a developer enabled a high-cost service in a sandbox account. The finance team wants an alert when monthly forecasted spend exceeds a threshold for each account. Which tool should be configured?
- AAWS CloudFormation drift detection for stacks
- BAWS Certificate Manager renewal notifications
- CAmazon Inspector vulnerability scans for EC2
- DAWS Budgets with forecast-based alerts per account
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Correct answer: DAWS Budgets can alert on actual or forecasted cost per account or tag, which allows early intervention. CloudFormation drift detection, Inspector scanning and certificate renewals do not monitor spend.
Question 22
Which two statements about Amazon EBS snapshots are correct? (Choose two.)
- ASnapshots can be copied to another Region for disaster recovery
- BSnapshots must be taken with the instance stopped to be consistent in every case
- CSnapshots can be restored only into the Availability Zone where the original volume was
- DSnapshots can be shared with other accounts only if they are made public
- EIncremental snapshots store only the blocks that changed since the previous snapshot
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Correct answer: A, ESnapshots after the first are incremental, and copying snapshots across Regions supports recovery plans. Stopping instances is not required for every consistent backup, and snapshots can be restored into other AZs in the Region and shared with specific accounts without making them public.
Question 23
An application's Auto Scaling group frequently scales in too aggressively, dropping capacity while requests are still in progress and causing errors. Which change addresses this most directly?
- AIncrease the instance type to a larger size, which gives each host more CPU and memory headroom
- BAdjust the scale-in cooldown or use connection draining and a longer deregistration delay on the target group
- CRemove the load balancer from the design and have clients resolve each instance's IP address via DNS
- DDisable scaling entirely and keep the minimum capacity at one instance behind the load balancer
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Correct answer: BCooldowns and a suitable deregistration delay let in-flight requests finish before instances are terminated, which prevents errors during scale-in. Disabling scaling or removing the load balancer breaks elasticity or traffic distribution, and a larger instance does not fix in-flight termination.
Accelerate Workload Migration and Modernization (7 questions)
Question 24
A company is moving a large on-premises Oracle database to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL with minimal downtime. The schema must be converted first. Which pair of services should be used?
- AAWS Schema Conversion Tool for schema conversion and AWS Database Migration Service for ongoing replication
- BAWS DataSync for continuous database file transfer and Amazon Athena for converting the Oracle schema objects into PostgreSQL DDL
- CAmazon Snowball Edge for live replication over the network and AWS Glue for schema conversion of the target tables in Aurora
- DAmazon Route 53 Resolver endpoints for DNS-based schema conversion and Amazon Neptune graph database for replication of Oracle tables
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Correct answer: AThe Schema Conversion Tool converts the schema and stored code for the target engine, and DMS replicates data with change data capture to minimize cutover downtime. DataSync moves files, Snowball is an offline device, and Route 53 Resolver is DNS.
Question 25
A company must migrate 300 physical and virtual servers to AWS with minimal change to the operating systems and an automated replication-based cutover. Which service fits best?
- AAWS Batch for managed batch job queues
- BAWS Application Migration Service
- CAWS Glue DataBrew transforms
- DAmazon EventBridge Scheduler
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Correct answer: BApplication Migration Service performs continuous block-level replication from source servers and supports automated test and cutover, which suits lift-and-shift migrations. Batch runs jobs, EventBridge Scheduler triggers schedules, and DataBrew prepares data.
Question 26
Which two factors should be assessed to decide whether an application should be refactored to serverless rather than rehosted? (Choose two.)
- AWhether the server has a specific brand of network card
- BWhether the application uses a particular font in its UI
- CWhether the monitor used by the operators is wide
- DWhether the application is event-driven with variable or spiky traffic
- EWhether the team can change code and operational model to fit managed services
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Correct answer: D, EEvent-driven, spiky workloads benefit most from pay-per-use managed compute, and refactoring only pays off if the team can adopt the new operating model. Hardware brands, fonts and monitors do not affect the migration decision.
Question 27
A company is migrating a legacy monolith to microservices incrementally. It must route some URL paths to the new services while the monolith continues to serve the rest. Which pattern fits best?
- ARewriting the full application in a single release with automated tests skipped to save sprint time
- BThe strangler fig pattern with an API or load balancer routing rules that gradually shift paths to new services
- CDuplicating the monolith into every AZ behind the same load balancer with one shared database
- DA big-bang cutover of every service on one weekend at night with no rollback or fallback path
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Correct answer: BThe strangler fig pattern moves functionality piece by piece behind a routing layer, which allows incremental migration and rollback. A big-bang cutover removes fallback options, duplicating the monolith does not split functionality, and untested rewrites carry high risk.
Question 28
A company must transfer 200 TB of archived files from an on-premises NAS to Amazon S3 over a 1 Gbps link within two weeks. Which approach meets the deadline most practically?
- APrinting the files on paper and mailing the printouts by overnight courier to HQ
- BEmailing the files as attachments in batches through a corporate mail relay server
- CTransferring everything through the existing 1 Gbps internet link over HTTPS to S3
- DAWS Snowball Edge devices shipped to the data center for offline transfer
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Correct answer: DAt 1 Gbps, 200 TB takes many weeks even at full utilization, so an offline device transfer such as Snowball Edge is the practical choice. Emailing or printing is impractical, and the link alone cannot finish within two weeks.
Question 29
A company wants to move file shares from an on-premises NFS server to Amazon FSx or EFS with scheduled, incremental copies and bandwidth control. Which service is designed for this?
- AAWS Step Functions
- BAmazon Glacier Select
- CAWS DataSync
- DAmazon WorkDocs
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Correct answer: CDataSync copies files between on-premises storage and AWS services with scheduling, incremental transfer and bandwidth limits. Glacier Select queries archived data, Step Functions orchestrates workflows, and WorkDocs is a document collaboration service.
Question 30
A company wants to replace an on-premises message broker that uses JMS with a managed service that keeps the same API for the application. Which service fits best?
- AAmazon Pinpoint
- BAmazon Kinesis Data Firehose
- CAmazon MQ
- DAmazon Simple Notification Service
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Correct answer: CAmazon MQ runs managed ActiveMQ or RabbitMQ brokers that support JMS and other standard protocols, so applications change little. SNS uses different APIs, Firehose delivers streams to destinations, and Pinpoint handles messaging campaigns.
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