SAA-C03 · AWS · Design Resilient Architectures · Bank updated 2026-11-04
SAA-C03 practice questions: Design Resilient Architectures
5 free questions from 48 on this area · answer and explanation for each · no sign-up
These 5 questions come from the Design Resilient Architectures section of our SAA-C03 bank (48 questions on this area, which carries 26% of the real exam). Every question is original, with the correct answer explained and linked to the source it is drawn from.
Free: 6 questions in study mode, no card. All 48 Design Resilient Architectures questions and the full SAA-C03 bank: $15 one-time.
1/5 · Design Resilient Architectures · easy
A payroll application stores its data in a Single-AZ Amazon RDS for MySQL instance. Last quarter an Availability Zone event left the application unavailable for four hours while the team restored the database from a snapshot in another zone. The business now requires that the database recover in another Availability Zone automatically and without losing committed transactions, and the application code cannot be changed. Which solution will meet these requirements?
ACreate a cross-Region read replica of the DB instance and fail over to the replica.
BModify the DB instance to a Multi-AZ deployment with a standby in the same Region.
CRaise the automated backup retention period to 35 days and add an hourly manual snapshot.
DReplicate into a second DB instance in another Availability Zone with AWS DMS.
Answer: B. Task Statement 2.2 covers implementing designs to mitigate single points of failure and selecting services for high availability across Availability Zones. The Amazon RDS User Guide states that in a Multi-AZ deployment 'Amazon RDS automatically provisions and maintains a synchronous standby replica in a different Availability Zone', which protects 'against DB instance failure and Availability Zone disruption'. Synchronous replication is what makes a failover free of committed-transaction loss.
Source: AWS SAA-C03 Exam Guide - Domain 2: Design Resilient Architectures
2/5 · Design Resilient Architectures
A company wants visitors to see a branded maintenance page instead of a connection error whenever its application, which runs behind an Application Load Balancer, stops responding. The maintenance page is a small static site that the company has published as an Amazon S3 website. While the application is healthy, all visitors must reach it, and the standby path must cost almost nothing. Which solution will meet these requirements?
ACreate weighted Amazon Route 53 records that send 99 percent of queries to the load balancer and 1 percent to the Amazon S3 website endpoint.
BCreate latency-based Amazon Route 53 records for the load balancer and for the Amazon S3 website endpoint in a second Region so visitors are sent to the closer of the two.
CAdd a listener rule on the Application Load Balancer that returns the maintenance page as a fixed response when the target group's health checks are failing.
DCreate Amazon Route 53 failover records with the load balancer alias as the primary record with a health check, and the Amazon S3 website as the secondary.
Answer: D. Task Statement 2.2 covers failover strategies and Amazon Route 53. The Route 53 Developer Guide states that the failover routing policy is used 'when you want to configure active-passive failover', and that in active-passive failover 'when the primary resource is healthy, Route 53 responds to DNS queries using the primary record. When the primary resource is unhealthy, Route 53 responds to DNS queries using the secondary record.' Weighted and latency policies answer different questions entirely.
Source: AWS SAA-C03 Exam Guide - Domain 2: Design Resilient Architectures
3/5 · Design Resilient Architectures
A bucket holding 12 years of contracts must have a copy in a second AWS Region. An engineer created a live Cross-Region Replication rule a week ago. Contracts written since then appear in the destination bucket within minutes, the destination still holds nothing written before the rule existed, and the replication metrics report no failures. Which action produces the missing copies?
ARecreate the replication rule with a filter that matches each object key
BTurn on S3 Replication Time Control on the existing replication rule
CPoint a second replication rule at the same destination bucket
DRun an S3 Batch Replication job over the source bucket's contents
Answer: D. Task Statement 2.2 covers storage options and characteristics including replication, and implementing strategies for data durability. The Amazon S3 User Guide's replication overview states that live replication is used 'to automatically replicate new and updated objects as they are written to the source bucket' and that 'live replication doesn't replicate any objects that existed in the bucket before you set up replication. To replicate objects that existed before you set up replication, use on-demand replication.' The Batch Replication topic adds that it can replicate 'objects that existed before a replication configuration was in place', 'objects that have previously been replicated' and 'objects that have failed replication'. Zero failures in the metrics is consistent with this: the old objects were never candidates, so nothing failed.
Source: AWS SAA-C03 Exam Guide - Domain 2: Design Resilient Architectures
4/5 · Design Resilient Architectures
Users upload large files through an Application Load Balancer to Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group, and a single upload can run for up to four minutes. Since a configuration change last month, uploads that are in progress on an instance when the group scales in fail with a 5xx error, while uploads on instances that keep running finish normally. Which setting most likely needs to change?
AThe load balancer's connection idle timeout, raised above four minutes
BThe target group's deregistration delay, raised above four minutes
CLeast outstanding requests as the target group's routing algorithm
DSticky sessions based on a load balancer generated cookie
Answer: B. Task Statement 2.1 covers scaling strategies for the components of an architecture. The Elastic Load Balancing guide states that 'Elastic Load Balancing stops sending requests to targets that are deregistering. By default, Elastic Load Balancing waits 300 seconds before completing the deregistration process, which can help in-flight requests to the target to complete.' It continues: 'After the deregistration delay elapses, the deregistration process completes and the state of the target is unused. If the target is part of an Auto Scaling group, it can be terminated and replaced', and 'If a deregistering target terminates the connection before the deregistration delay elapses, the client receives a 500-level error response.' The connection idle timeout, by contrast, 'is the period of time an existing client or target connection can remain inactive, with no data being sent or received, before the load balancer closes the connection.'
Source: SAA-C03 Exam Guide, Domain 2 Task Statement 2.1; verified at Elastic Load Balancing, 'Edit target group attributes for your Application Load Balancer' - Deregistration delay, https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/application/edit-target-group-attributes.html and 'Edit attributes for your Application Load Balancer' - Connection idle timeout, https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/application/edit-load-balancer-attributes.html
5/5 · Design Resilient Architectures
A site serves content through Amazon CloudFront with a primary origin and a secondary origin configured for origin failover. The primary origin begins returning failures for a share of requests. How does CloudFront treat the requests that follow?
Aall requests move to the secondary until the primary passes a health check
BCloudFront updates a DNS record so clients resolve to the secondary
Crequests are split between both origins by configured weights
Deach request tries the primary first and falls back on failure
Answer: D. CloudFront origin failover works per request. When a request to the primary endpoint fails, CloudFront routes that request to the secondary endpoint, but subsequent requests still go to the primary. This differs from Route 53 and Global Accelerator, which move traffic away from an unhealthy endpoint.
Source: Amazon Web Services documentation (docs.aws.amazon.com), Pilot light, p. 1
Source: AWS SAA-C03 Exam Guide - Domain 1: Design Secure Architectures
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