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

Understanding the Requirement: The company needs to migrate applications to AWS, maintaining isolated networks while allowing communication with a shared services VPC and among the applications.

Analysis of Options:

Software VPN Tunnels: This approach involves high administrative overhead and complexity in managing multiple VPN connections.

VPC Peering: While suitable for smaller numbers of VPCs, it becomes complex and hard to manage at scale with over 100 applications.

Direct Connect: Primarily used for high-bandwidth, low-latency connections to on-premises networks, not inter-VPC communication.

Transit Gateway: Simplifies network management by acting as a central hub, allowing easy routing and scalability as more applications are migrated.

Best Solution:

Transit Gateway: This provides a scalable, efficient solution with minimal administrative overhead for managing network connections between multiple VPCs and the shared services VPC.

Requirement Analysis: The product catalog search is causing high CPU utilization on the MySQL DB instance, slowing down the website.

ElastiCache Overview: Amazon ElastiCache for Redis can be used to cache frequently accessed data, reducing load on the database.

Lazy Loading: This caching strategy loads data into the cache only when it is requested, improving response times for repeated queries.

Implementation:

Set up an ElastiCache for Redis cluster.

Modify the application to check the cache before querying the database.

Use lazy loading to populate the cache on cache misses.

Conclusion: This approach reduces database load and improves website performance during product catalog searches.

References

Amazon ElastiCache:ElastiCache Documentation

Caching Strategies:ElastiCache Caching Strategies

Understanding the Requirement: The company needs to monitor and notify changes to the OU hierarchy with minimal operational overhead.

Analysis of Options:

AWS Control Tower with Account Drift Notifications: AWS Control Tower provides automated account provisioning and governance, including drift detection and notifications for changes in the OU hierarchy.

AWS Control Tower with AWS Config: AWS Config provides resource configuration tracking but is more complex compared to drift notifications directly available in Control Tower.

AWS Service Catalog with CloudTrail: While CloudTrail tracks changes, setting up notification mechanisms involves more operational overhead.

AWS CloudFormation with Drift Detection: Suitable for tracking configuration changes but less efficient for monitoring OU hierarchy changes compared to Control Tower's built-in features.

Best Solution:

AWS Control Tower with Account Drift Notifications: Provides a streamlined and efficient way to detect and notify changes in the OU hierarchy with minimal operational overhead.

Understanding the Requirement: The application running on EC2 instances in private subnets needs frequent access to large confidential files stored in S3, minimizing data transfer costs.

Analysis of Options:

Gateway Endpoint for S3: Provides a secure, scalable, and cost-effective way for instances in private subnets to access S3 without using the internet or NAT gateways, thus minimizing data transfer costs.

Single NAT Gateway: Incurs additional costs for data transfer through the NAT gateway, which is not cost-effective.

PrivateLink Interface Endpoint for S3: Primarily used for accessing AWS services over a private connection but is more complex and costly compared to a gateway endpoint for S3.

Multiple NAT Gateways: Increases costs significantly and adds complexity without offering the cost benefits of a gateway endpoint.

Best Solution:

Gateway Endpoint for S3: This solution provides the required access with the least data transfer costs and minimal complexity.

Requirement Analysis: The application involves batch processing of large data transfers between EC2 instances.

Data Transfer Costs: Data transfer within the same Availability Zone (AZ) is typically free, while cross-AZ transfers incur additional costs.

Implementation:

Launch all EC2 instances within the same Availability Zone.

Ensure the instances are part of the same subnet to facilitate seamless data transfer.

Conclusion: Placing all EC2 instances in the same AZ reduces data transfer costs significantly without affecting the application’s functionality.

References

AWS Pricing:AWS Data Transfer Pricing

This solution meets the requirements most cost-effectively because it enables the company to migrate its on-premises NFS data store to AWS without changing the existing applications or workflows. AWS Storage Gateway is a hybrid cloud storage service that provides seamless and secure integration between on-premises and AWS storage. Amazon S3 File Gateway is a type of AWS Storage Gateway that provides a file interface to Amazon S3, with local caching for low-latency access. By setting up an Amazon S3 File Gateway, the company can store and retrieve files as objects in Amazon S3 using standard file protocols such as NFS. The company can also use an Amazon S3 Lifecycle policy to automatically transition the data to the appropriate storage class based on the frequency of access and the cost of storage. For example, the company can use S3 Standard for frequently accessed data, S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) or S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA) for less frequently accessed data, and S3 Glacier or S3 Glacier Deep Archive for long-term archival data.

Option A is not a valid solution because AWS Storage Gateway Volume Gateway is a type of AWS Storage Gateway that provides a block interface to Amazon S3, with local caching for low-latency access. Volume Gateway is not suitable for migrating an NFS data store, as it requires attaching the volumes to EC2 instances or on-premises servers using the iSCSI protocol. Option C is not a valid solution because Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) is a fully managed elastic NFS file system that is designed for workloads that require high availability, scalability, and performance. Amazon EFS Standard-Infrequent Access (Standard-IA) is a storage class within Amazon EFS that is optimized for infrequently accessed files, with a lower price per GB and a higher price per access. Using Amazon EFS Standard-IA for migrating an NFS data store would not be cost-effective, as it would incur higher access charges and require additional configuration to enable lifecycle management. Option D is not a valid solution because Amazon EFS One Zone-Infrequent Access (One Zone-IA) is a storage class within Amazon EFS that isoptimized for infrequently accessed files that do not require the availability and durability of Amazon EFS Standard or Standard-IA. Amazon EFS One Zone-IA stores data in a single Availability Zone, which reduces the cost by 47% compared to Amazon EFS Standard-IA, but also increases the risk of data loss in the event of an Availability Zone failure. Using Amazon EFS One Zone-IA for migrating an NFS data store would not be cost-effective, as it would incur higher access charges and require additional configuration to enable lifecycle management. It would also compromise the availability and durability of the data.

Understanding the Requirement: The company needs to redesign the architecture to be highly available and use AWS managed solutions for hosting a web application with static content, PHP application, and Redis for user sessions.

Analysis of Options:

AWS Elastic Beanstalk: Suitable for simplifying deployment but may not provide the desired flexibility and control for complex architectures.

AWS Lambda and API Gateway: Not ideal for hosting a stateful PHP application and handling static content.Adding complexity without significant benefit.

EC2 instance with ElastiCache and S3: Provides some high availability but involves managing EC2 instances, which increases operational overhead.

CloudFront with S3, ALB, ECS with Fargate, and ElastiCache: This solution leverages fully managed AWS services for each component, ensuring high availability and scalability.

Best Solution:

CloudFront with S3, ALB, ECS with Fargate, and ElastiCache: This combination of services meets the requirements for a highly available and managed solution, ensuring optimal performance and minimal operational overhead.

A service control policy (SCP) is a type of policy that you can use to manage permissions in your organization. SCPs offer central control over the maximum available permissions for all accounts in your organization, allowing you to ensure your accounts stay within your organization’s access control guidelines. SCPs are available only in an organization that has all features enabled. SCPs do not grant permissions; instead, they specify the maximum permissions for an organization or organizational unit (OU). SCPs limit permissions that identity-basedpolicies or resource-based policies grant to entities (users or roles) within the account, but do not grant permissions to entities. You can use SCPs to restrict the actions that the root user in an account can perform. You can also use SCPs to prevent users or roles in any account from creating or modifying certain AWS resources, such as EC2 instances with public IP addresses or IAM resources with inline policies or “". For example, you can create an SCP that denies the ec2:RunInstances action if the request includes the AssociatePublicIpAddress parameter set to true. You can also create an SCP that denies the iam:PutUserPolicy and iam:PutRolePolicy actions if the request includes a policy document that contains "”. By attaching these SCPs to your organization or OUs, you can prevent the deployment of AWS CloudFormation stacks that violate these rules.

AWS Control Tower proactive controls are guardrails that enforce preventive policies on your accounts and resources. Proactive guardrails are implemented as AWS Organizations service control policies (SCPs) and AWS Config rules. However, AWS Control Tower does not provide a built-in proactive guardrail to block EC2 instances with public IP addresses or IAM resources with inline policies or “*”. You would have to create your own custom guardrails using AWS CloudFormation templates and SCPs, which is essentially the same as option D. Therefore, option A is not correct.

AWS Control Tower detective controls are guardrails that detect and alert on policy violations in your accounts and resources. Detective guardrails are implemented as AWS Config rules and Amazon CloudWatch alarms. Detective guardrails do not block or remediate noncompliant resources; they only notify you of the issues. Therefore, option B is not correct.

AWS Config is a service that enables you to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of your AWS resources. AWS Config continuously monitors and records your AWS resource configurations and allows you to automate the evaluation of recorded configurations against desired configurations. AWS Config rules are customizable, AWS Lambda functions that AWS Config invokes to evaluate your AWS resource configurations. You can use AWS Config rules to check for compliance with your policies, such as ensuring that EC2 instances have public IP addresses disabled or IAM resources do not have inline policies or “*”. However, AWS Config rules alone cannot prevent the deployment of AWS CloudFormation stacks that violate these policies; they can only report the compliance status. You would need to use another service, such as AWS Systems Manager Session Manager, to run automation scripts to delete or modify the noncompliant resources. This would require additional configuration and permissions, and may not be the most efficient or secure way to enforce your policies. Therefore, option C is not correct.