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

Using a Lambda function as part of the Kinesis Data Firehose pipeline allows for real-time detection and masking of PII before data is written to S3. This ensures that PII is never stored in its raw form in the data lake.

Option B:Amazon Macie can scan and classify data but does not provide in-line PII masking for data ingestion.

Option C:Server-side encryption secures data but does not mask PII.

Option D:CloudHSM is unnecessary for PII masking and adds complexity without addressing the requirements.

AWS Documentation References:

Using Lambda with Kinesis Data Firehose

Aurora global database is specifically designed for cross-Region disaster recovery and low-latency global reads.

It provides:

Physical storage-level replication between Regions, typically with lag of under 1 second, easily satisfying RPO 1 minute.

Fast cross-Region failover capabilities, often within minutes or less, which meets the RTO 5 minutes requirement.

You configure the primary Region as the writer cluster and additional Regions (such as us-west-1) as secondary clusters with reader endpoints. In a disaster, you promote the secondary to be the new writer.

Why others are not correct:

A: Standard cross-Region read replicas for Aurora PostgreSQL do not provide automatic multi-Region failover with the same guarantees as Aurora global database and may not meet strict RTO/RPO requirements.

C: Logical replication and custom EventBridge failover is complex, error-prone, and higher overhead compared to the managed global database feature.

D: Restoring from snapshots plus cross-Region replication is too slow to meet RTO 5 minutes and certainly cannot maintain RPO 1 minute.

Amazon Neptune: Neptune is a fully managed graph database service that is optimized for storing and querying highly connected data. It supports both property graph and RDF graph models, making it suitable for applications that need to analyze relationships between data entities.

Neptune Streams: Neptune Streams captures changes to the graph and streams these changes to other AWS services. This is useful for applications that need to monitor and respond to changes in real-time, such as providing recommendations based on user interactions and relationships.

Least Operational Overhead: Using Neptune Streams directly with Amazon Neptune ensures that the solution is tightly integrated, reducing the need for additional components and minimizing operational overhead. This integration simplifies the architecture by eliminating the need for a separate service like Kinesis for change processing.

The key requirements are shared storage, SMB protocol support, and least administrative overhead. Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is a fully managed AWS service designed specifically to provide native SMB file shares compatible with Windows-based workloads and SMB clients.

Option D is the optimal solution because FSx for Windows File Server eliminates the need to manage operating systems, patching, backups, file server clustering, and availability. AWS handles infrastructure management, scaling, and availability, while providing high-performance file storage that integrates seamlessly with Active Directory and supports standard Windows file permissions and SMB semantics. This makes it ideal for media applications that rely on shared file access.

Option A (Storage Gateway Volume Gateway) is designed primarily for hybrid environments that extend on-premises storage into AWS, not for cloud-native shared file systems. Option B (Tape Gateway) is intended for backup and archival workflows, not active file access. Option C requires significant operational overhead, including OS maintenance, security patching, scaling, and high availability design.

Therefore, D meets all requirements with the least administrative effort while providing a scalable, secure, and highly available SMB-compatible storage solution.