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

To improve read performance for a MySQL-based RDS database under load, you can:

Use Read Replicas: Amazon RDS supports MySQL read replicas, which help offload read operations from the primary database, improving performance during high traffic.

Use ElastiCache (Memcached): Adding an in-memory cache layer using Amazon ElastiCache reduces the load on the RDS instance by serving frequent queries directly from memory, especially when data is not updated often.

Option A (AWS WAF) is for web security, not database performance. Option D relates to storage optimization, not query latency. Option E would require re-architecting from relational to NoSQL, which is unnecessary and disruptive.

AWS Fargate provides per-pod isolation for CPU, memory, storage, and networking, making it ideal for multi-tenant use cases.

AWS Documentation References:

EKS with Fargate

The requirements are high availability, scalability for traffic spikes, and least administrative overhead. Option C matches established AWS reference patterns: use an Application Load Balancer + Auto Scaling group for the web tier and a managed database service with Multi-AZ for the database tier.

For the web application, placing EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group across multiple Availability Zones allows the fleet to scale out automatically during the promotional event and to scale in afterward, preserving performance while controlling cost. The Application Load Balancer distributes requests across instances and AZs and removes unhealthy instances from rotation, improving availability.

For the database, Amazon RDS Multi-AZ is the simplest managed HA solution for relational engines, including SQL Server. Multi-AZ provides synchronous replication to a standby instance in another Availability Zone and supports automatic failover. This reduces administrative effort because AWS handles replication, failover orchestration, backups, and underlying infrastructure maintenance within service capabilities. It also ensures database availability during instance or AZ-level disruptions.

Option A is problematic because RDS for SQL Server does not use read replicas as the primary HA mechanism the way Aurora does, and focusing on replicas does not directly address HA in the simplest supported form. Option B and D rely on self-managed SQL Server on EC2, which requires significant operational overhead (patching, backups, replication setup, failover testing, monitoring, and recovery). Option B also suggests multi-Region replication, which adds complexity and is not required to meet “highly available and scalable” for a single-event scale scenario.

Therefore, C provides scalable compute with managed load balancing and managed database high availability, meeting the requirements with the least operational burden.

Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering is designed for data with unknown or changing access patterns. It automatically moves data between frequent and infrequent access tiers based on usage. This tier offers immediate access to all objects, regardless of which tier they are stored in, while optimizing storage costs. S3 Intelligent-Tiering also provides the same high durability, availability, and security as other S3 storage classes and supports access from external resources using standard S3 APIs. Lifecycle policies and Glacier classes are more suitable for archival when infrequent access is predictable, but retrieval from Glacier classes is not immediate and incurs extra charges and delays.

Reference Extract from AWS Documentation / Study Guide:

" S3 Intelligent-Tiering is designed to optimize costs by automatically moving data between two access tiers when access patterns change. Data is always available and immediately accessible, making it ideal for unknown or unpredictable access patterns. "

Source: AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Official Study Guide, S3 Storage Classes section.

Serving static content from Amazon S3 is highly cost-effective and scalable. By fronting the S3 bucket with Amazon CloudFront, you also enable global caching, reduced latency, and even lower costs by reducing direct S3 access. There is no need for EC2 or ALB, and no need to manage servers, further lowering operational burden and expenses. This pattern is the recommended AWS architecture for serving static web content.

Reference Extract from AWS Documentation / Study Guide:

" Hosting static websites on Amazon S3 with Amazon CloudFront reduces infrastructure costs and improves performance for global users by caching content at edge locations. "

Source: AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Official Study Guide, S3 and CloudFront section.

AWSDirect Connectis the best solution for establishing a consistent, low-latency connection from an on-premises data center to AWS without using the public internet. Direct Connect offers dedicated, high-throughput, and low-latency network connections, which are ideal for performance-sensitive applications like a trading platform that processes high volumes of market data and stock trades.

Direct Connect provides a private connection to your AWS VPC, ensuring that data doesn ' t traverse the public internet, which enhances both security and performance consistency.

AWS References:

AWS Direct Connectprovides a dedicated network connection to AWS services with consistent, low-latency performance.

Best Practices for High Performance on AWSfor performance-sensitive workloads like trading platforms.

Why the other options are incorrect:

A. AWS Client VPN: While this offers secure connectivity, it ' s over the public internet and is not designed for the low-latency, high-performance needs of a trading platform.

C. AWS PrivateLink: PrivateLink is used for connecting VPCs and services within AWS, but it is not designed for connecting on-premises data centers to AWS.

D. AWS Site-to-Site VPN: Although this provides secure connectivity, it uses the public internet, which can introduce latency and doesn ' t meet the low-latency requirements of the use case.

The recommended and simplest method for granting cross-account access to an S3 bucket is to use a bucket policy that grants permission to the other AWS account.

This provides direct, controlled, IAM-based access without duplication of data or use of distribution mechanisms like CloudFront.

Transfer Acceleration and replication are unrelated to permissions.

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