Amazon Web Services Updated SAA-C03 Exam Questions and Answers by trent

Option A introduces complexity and does not scale well.

Option B creates a read replica, offloading read traffic from the primary RDS instance without impacting the critical application.

Option C is manual and inefficient.

Option D might help for caching frequently queried data but is not ideal for ad-hoc reporting.Therefore, Option B is the best choice.

Converting the existing DynamoDB table to a global table provides active-active replication and low-latency reads and writes in both Regions. DynamoDB global tables are specifically designed for multi-Region and multi-active use cases.

Option A: GSIs do not provide multi-Region replication or active-active capabilities.

Option B and D: Using DynamoDB Streams and custom replication is less operationally efficient than global tables and introduces additional complexity.

AWS Documentation References:

DynamoDB Global Tables

Key Requirements:

High availability and automatic recovery.

Separate transactional and analytical queries with minimal performance impact.

Allow up to a 4-hour lag for analytical queries.

Analysis of Options:

Option A:

Multi-AZ deployments provide high availability but do not include read replicas for separating transactional and analytical queries.

Analytical queries on the secondary DB instance would impact the transactional workload.

Incorrect Approach: Does not meet the requirement of query separation.

Option B:

Multi-AZ DB clusters provide high availability and include a reader endpoint. However, these are better suited for Aurora and not RDS for MySQL.

Incorrect Approach: Not applicable to standard RDS for MySQL.

Option C:

Multiple read replicas allow separation of transactional and analytical workloads.

Queries can be pointed to a replica in a different AZ, ensuring no impact on transactional queries.

Correct Approach: Meets all requirements with high availability and query separation.

Option D:

Creating nightly snapshots and read-only databases adds significant operational overhead and does not support the 4-hour lag requirement.

Incorrect Approach: Not practical for dynamic query separation.

AWS Solution Architect References:

Amazon RDS Read Replicas

Multi-AZ Deployments

AWS Config is a service that enables you to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of your AWS resources. By creating a Config rule, you can automatically check whether your Amazon EBS volumes are encrypted and flag those that are not, with minimal cost and configuration effort.

AWS Config Rule: AWS Config provides managed rules that you can use to automatically check the compliance of your resources against predefined or custom criteria. In this case, you would create a rule to evaluate EBS volumes and determine if they are encrypted. If a volume is not encrypted, the rule will flag it, allowing you to take corrective action.

Operational Overhead: This approach significantly reduces operational overhead because once the rule is in place, it continuously monitors your EBS volumes for compliance, and there’s no need for manual checks or custom scripting.

Why Not Other Options?:

Option A (Lambda with API calls and EventBridge): While this can work, it involves writing and maintaining custom code, which increases operational overhead compared to using a managed AWS Config rule.

Option B (API calls on Fargate): Running API calls on Fargate is more complex and costly compared to using AWS Config, which provides a simpler, managed solution.

Option C (IAM policy with Cost Explorer): This option does not directly enforce encryption compliance and involves manual intervention, making it less efficient and more prone to errors.

AWS References:

AWS Config Rules - Overview of AWS Config rules and how they can be used to evaluate resource configurations.

Amazon EBS Encryption - Information on how to manage and enforce encryption for EBS volumes.