10 AWS Solutions Architect Certification SAA-C03 exam questions

So, you've decided to take the AWS Solutions Architect certification exam—congratulations! The fact that you're reading this shows you're committed, and commitment is the first step toward success.

The AWS Solutions Architect Certification—Associate (SAA-C03) is one of the best ways to level up your resume. It not only validates your expertise in designing high-performing, resilient, cost-effective, and secure solutions on AWS—it shows you know how to apply these skills in real-world scenarios. The exam tests your ability to solve practical challenges, using scenario-based questions that simulate real AWS environments.

In this blog, we’ll into the top 10 AWS Solutions Architect certification exam questions and explore how to tackle them effectively. But first, let’s take a look at the exam structure so you know what to expect.

We'll discuss:

• What the exam covers

• A strategy for approaching the questions

• Top 10 exam questions (and answers)

Let's go!

What does the exam cover?#

The exam evaluates the candidates' AWS design skills in these key areas:

The certification exam includes two different kinds of multiple-choice questions:

• Single correct answer: One correct answer out of four provided options.

• Multiple correct answers: Two or more correct answers out of five or more provided options.

Sample exam questions#

Now that you understand the scope and structure of the exam, let’s dive into some sample questions, which have been separated by design category: secure architectures, resilient architectures, high-performing architectures, and cost-optimized architectures.

We'll start with one question—and then we'll look at a strategy to help you systematically approach answering the exam questions, and apply it to this one.

Design secure architectures#

Secure architectures involve designing and implementing robust security measures to protect AWS resources, workloads, and applications.

Question #1#

An AI-based startup is preparing to launch its three-tier web application using third-party Domain Name Services (DNS). The application takes an image and analyzes it to label its content. It is deployed over multiple EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application and database layers are deployed in the private subnet of the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).

As a solutions architect, recommend a solution that protects against large-scale DDoS attacks and SQL injections with the least operational overhead.

A. Use AWS Shield to ALB to protect against DDoS attacks, attach AWS WAF in front of the ALB, and associate appropriate web ACLs with WAF.

B. Attach AWS Shield Advanced and WAF to ALB to block all the SQL injection and manage large-scale DDoS attacks automatically.

C. Use AWS Shield with ALB to protect against DDoS attacks and Amazon Inspector to block all SQL injection attempts automatically.

D. Use AWS WAF in front of the ALB and Amazon Inspector to block all SQL injection attempts automatically.

How to approach the questions in the exam#

Now that we've seen what the exam questions are like, we can discuss the steps to approach such a question and apply them to the one above to see its practical implementation.

Step 1: Read the question carefully and identify all the key requirements in the question.

Take your time reading the question and make a list of the key requirements, as missing even a single requirement might lead you to an incorrect answer.

The scenario given above requires the following:

1. Prevent SQL injections

2. Prevent DDoS attacks

3. Least operational overhead

Step 2: Eliminate clearly incorrect options.

Some of the options might not fullfil any or atleast one requirement very clearly rendering them as incorrect options. Eliminating any such options will help increase your chance of selecting the correct option.

In the question, option C is clearly incorrect as the suggested design has no way to prevent SQL injections. Similarly, option D is also incorrect as the suggested design won't offer protection against DDoS attacks at network and transport layers (WAF can only detect threats at the application layer). So we can eliminate options C and D. This leaves us only with two options, A and B, increasing our chance of selecting the correct answer.

Step 3: Compare the remaining options to see which one best fulfills the given requirements.

After eliminating the clearly incorrect options, you can focus on the options that fulfill the given requirements and choose the one that best fits the scenario.

For the question given above, options A and B can both be used to prevent SQL injections and DDoS attacks, so the first two requirements are fulfilled. But wait! There is one more crucial requirement: the least operational overhead. And in this case, option B is better than option A.

Question #2#

A multinational company with multiple AWS accounts wants to centralize governance and enforce security best practices—like mandatory encryption and restricted permissions—while allowing each business unit flexibility to manage its resources.

As a solutions architect, recommend a solution to centrally manage security policies across all AWS accounts. (Select two options.)

A. Use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to create roles with the required policies and share these roles across accounts.

B. Use AWS Organizations to create Service Control Policies (SCPs) and apply them to all organizational units (OUs).

C. Use AWS Config to monitor compliance and apply necessary changes to each account based on the findings.

D. Use AWS Control Tower to set up a multi-account environment and enforce governance rules.

E. Use AWS CloudTrail to log all account activities and review the logs to enforce security policies.

F. Use AWS Security Hub to aggregate security findings and enforce security policies across accounts.

Question #3#

A developer needs specific permissions for DynamoDB operations, like creating, deleting, and querying tables. To enhance security and avoid exposing long-term credentials, you choose a temporary access solution that’s easy to manage and scalable as the team grows.

Which approach will best meet these requirements?

A. Create an IAM user for each developer with policies attached for the required DynamoDB operations and enforce regular password changes.

B. Create a dedicated IAM role with policies for the required DynamoDB operations, then configure an identity provider (IAM Identity Center) to allow developers to assume this role and obtain temporary credentials.

C. Use AWS Secrets Manager to store and rotate credentials for DynamoDB, providing developers access to the secrets needed to perform their tasks.

D. Implement a combination of AWS Lambda and AWS Step Functions to automate the issuance of temporary credentials for developers to use with DynamoDB operations.

Design resilient architectures#

Resilient architectures refer to the design principles and strategies to ensure high availability and fault tolerance of systems deployed on AWS.

Question #4#

A healthcare company’s web app, hosted on EC2 instances behind an Elastic Load Balancer (ELB), requires session state continuity for users. The company seeks to improve resilience, high availability, and session state preservation during failovers.

As a solutions architect, recommend a solution that maintains secure session state, ensures high availability, and provides low-latency access.

A. Configure the ELB to enable sticky sessions and set a consistent session duration for all users.

B. Store session state in Amazon RDS and configure the application to retrieve session data from the database.

C. Use Amazon ElastiCache to store session state in a Redis or Memcached cluster, ensuring session data is available across instances.

D. Configure the application to use client-side cookies to store session data, ensuring that the session state is maintained on the client side.

Question #5#

A company hosts multi-tier web applications on AWS Cloud. The company uses Amazon RDS for SQL DB as the database. After a change in the compliance policy, the company sets the recovery point objective (RPO) of less than 3 seconds for its production database.

As a solutions architect provide a solution to meet these requirements.

A. Schedule regular automated backups of your RDS instance to Amazon S3 and manually restore the database from the latest backup to a new RDS instance.

B. Enable Auto Scaling for DB instance in an Availability Zone.

C. Configure multiple RDS read replicas in different Availability Zones.

D. Enable Auto Scaling for DB instances in different Availability Zones.

Question #6#

A company is migrating a .NET application from an on-premises Windows Server with Oracle Database to AWS. They want to minimize development changes while ensuring high availability in the new environment.

As a solutions architect, recommend the actions the company should take to meet these requirements. (Select two options.)

A. Refactor the application as serverless with AWS Lambda functions running .NET Core.

B. Rehost the application in AWS Elastic Beanstalk with the .NET platform in a Multi-AZ deployment.

C. Replatform the application to run on Amazon EC2 with the Amazon Linux Amazon Machine Image (AMI).

D. Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) to migrate from the Oracle database to Amazon DynamoDB in a Multi-AZ deployment.

E. Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) to migrate from the Oracle database to Oracle on Amazon RDS in a Multi-AZ deployment.

Design high-performing architectures#

High-performing architectures can efficiently handle significant workloads and scale seamlessly to accommodate future needs.

Question #7#

A streaming analytics firm processes large volumes of IoT data via Amazon Kinesis, with AWS Lambda for transformation and Amazon S3 for storage. The architecture must handle specific traffic levels, prevent data loss, and maintain low latency during peak periods.

As a solutions architect, suggest a solution to efficiently manage large data flows and ensure optimal handling.

A. Configure a Kinesis Data Stream with an increased shard count linked to a Lambda function for data processing, and use Amazon S3 with versioning for secure and traceable data storage.

B. Implement Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose for data ingestion, transform it through AWS Lambda, and store it in Amazon S3, applying lifecycle policies to manage data storage efficiently.

C. Configure AWS Lambda to directly process and analyze data from IoT devices, subsequently storing the results in Amazon S3 at scheduled intervals without the intermediate buffering of a streaming service like Kinesis.

D. Utilize Kinesis Data Streams paired with the Kinesis Client Library to batch data into specific time frames, triggering a Lambda function to store the processed data into Amazon S3, with consideration for potential latency implications in batch processing setups.

Question #8#

A company's three-tier application (presentation, business logic, and data storage) experiences transaction loss when overloaded. It uses RESTful APIs for communication. The company plans to migrate to AWS and explore modernization options.

As a solutions architect, design a solution to meet these requirements.

A. Use Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) for the communication layer and configure API Gateway to direct transactions to AWS Lambda function as the application layer to process.

B. Configure CloudWatch metrics to analyze the application performance during peak hours and increase the EC2 instances to meet the requirements.

C. Use Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) for the communication layer between application servers on EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. Configure CloudWatch metrics to analyze the SQS queue and scale based on the size.

D. Use Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) for the communication layer between application servers on EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group. Configure CloudWatch metrics to analyze the SNS queue and scale based on the size.

Design cost-optimized architectures#

Cost-optimized architectures provide a balance between performance requirements and cost.

Question #9#

A company plans to migrate its monolithic application to AWS, keeping much of the existing code but dividing it into smaller functional components managed by different teams. They need a highly available, scalable, and cost-efficient solution.

As a solutions architect, recommend a solution to meet these requirements.

A. Configure AWS Lambda to host the application and integrate the application with the API Gateway. 

B. Configure EC2 to host the application and integrate the application with the API Gateway. Set up an Application Load Balancer to forward requests to the Auto Scaling group as a target. 

C. Configure AWS Beanstalk to host the application and integrate the application with the API Gateway. Set up an Application Load Balancer to forward requests to healthy targets. 

D. Configure an ECS cluster with Fargate as infrastructure to host the application. Set up an Application Load Balancer to forward requests to the ECS cluster as the target. 

Question #10#

A media production company uses Amazon FSx for shared file storage in its video editing workflows. They want to optimize storage costs while maintaining high-performance access and balancing cost-effectiveness with performance needs.

As a solutions architect, recommend a solution to optimize Amazon FSx costs while meeting performance requirements.

A. Use Amazon FSx for Windows File Server with provisioned storage and enable data deduplication to reduce costs.

B. Configure Amazon FSx for Lustre with a lower-performance storage tier and enable automatic backups to minimize costs.

C. Opt for Amazon FSx for Windows File Server with the “Standard” performance tier and configure it with a lower capacity option to reduce costs.

D. Use Amazon FSx for Lustre with the “SSD” storage type and enable a data tiering policy to balance cost and performance.

What’s next#

By now, hopefully you have a better understanding of this exam's question types and how you can approach them systematically. For more practice, check out the AWS practice exam we’ve prepared.

If you're just starting out and want to build your AWS knowledge, our AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Exam preparation course covers essential concepts to help you pass the exam. You can also gain hands-on experience with AWS services through our Cloud Labs, which will give you practical experience without the hassle of setup.

Now that you’re equipped with these strategies and sample questions, go ace that exam with confidence! Good luck.