Amazon AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate SAA-C03 Practice Test 69

Question 680

An FSx Windows share is full even though deduplication was enabled, and monitoring shows the feature never processed its file types. Why?

Deduplication savings depend on supported file characteristics, schedules and actual deduplication processing, not the checkbox alone.
FSx for Windows deduplicates every encrypted, compressed or unsupported file by a fixed 90 percent regardless of content and maintenance.
Assume enabling FSx for Windows file-system deduplication instantly reclaims all duplicate blocks without scheduling or processing any eligible files.
Increase FSx file-share ACL permissions and assume it guarantees data deduplication will run and free storage automatically.

Explanation

Correct Answer

Verify FSx feature status, workload eligibility and measured compression/deduplication before forecasting savings.

Incorrect Answers

Deduplication benefits depend on eligible data characteristics and configured processing; there is no universal guaranteed reduction.

Deduplication requires relevant configuration, eligible file data and actual scheduled optimization processing; settings alone do not prove reclaimed bytes.

Permissions do not replace deduplication processing or make ineligible file types optimizable; inspect the feature’s jobs and logs.

Question 681

A team lowers S3 storage price but continues reading 50 TB monthly across Regions. The data-transfer charges remain. Why?

Storage-class optimization changes at-rest fees but not the application’s recurring cross-Region data movement.
Cross-Region S3 downloads have no transfer charge as long as the objects belong to the same AWS Organization.
Move the S3 objects to a lower-cost at-rest class and assume that automatically makes transfers between AWS Regions free.
Change only the S3 storage class without altering remote readers or the inter-Region copy pattern that caused the network charge.

Explanation

Correct Answer

Review network location, transfer and replication economics separately from storage rent.

Incorrect Answers

Organization membership does not generally waive inter-Region data transfer; place compute and data together or price an intentional replica.

Storage-at-rest pricing and inter-Region data-transfer charges are separate; the application still moves 50 TB across the boundary.

The same remote consumption path still crosses Regions. Consider locality, caching, replication placement and access patterns instead.

Question 682

An S3 Batch Operations job is created but processes zero objects because its manifest has no matching version IDs for a version-specific operation. What input boundary caused it?

A job manifest with wrong S3 object version IDs can safely tag the latest version automatically without any target mismatch.
Create a version-specific Batch Operations copy job but supply only bucket and object-key fields, assuming it can select the historical object version intended by the compliance manifest.
The job acts on the exact keys/versions in its manifest; incorrect manifest entries cannot be inferred from the bucket’s current state.
Enable S3 bucket versioning after job creation and assume the manifest entries are retroactively corrected for previous versions.

Explanation

Correct Answer

Validate manifest generation, IAM scope and failure reports before rerunning.

Incorrect Answers

The manifest controls object/version selection; wrong entries can skip or affect unintended targets and must be validated.

When the operation targets a specific object version, supplying only a key can select a different current version rather than the intended historical version. The manifest version IDs must be accurate.

Changing versioning state does not repair a stale or malformed manifest. Regenerate the version-aware input from the intended objects.

Question 683

An Auto Scaling launch template specifies an additional Amazon EBS data volume with DeleteOnTermination=false. The team terminates instances after each analytics batch, but the data volume remains available and billed. Which launch-time storage control would prevent creating new orphaned scratch volumes?

Change the data-volume block-device mapping to DeleteOnTermination=true for the ephemeral scratch volume, after confirming that no retained dataset is required.
Set EBS encryption to enabled and assume encrypted scratch volumes are automatically deleted on instance termination regardless of block-device settings.
Enable Amazon EBS snapshot scheduling and assume snapshot retention controls the instance-attached volume DeleteOnTermination attribute.
Disable the launch template versioning feature and expect EC2 to delete every separately attached EBS volume when an instance terminates.

Explanation

Correct Answer

DeleteOnTermination is a per-block-device mapping property. For scratch data that should not survive an Auto Scaling instance, setting it to true makes termination clean up that EBS data volume, subject to verifying the application needs no retention.

Incorrect Answers

At-rest encryption protects bytes but does not determine whether an EBS volume persists after the instance terminates. Lifecycle and cost behavior follow the block-device attachment configuration.

EBS snapshots are separate persisted backups. Snapshot retention policies do not replace the launch template block-device mapping controlling whether the attached source volume survives termination.

Launch template versions manage instance configuration history. They do not override EBS DeleteOnTermination semantics for attached data volumes. The specified mapping is the relevant control.

Question 684

After adding CloudFront, monthly costs still show expensive S3 requests because the distribution forwards unique query strings on every request. What is wrong?

Adding irrelevant cookies and headers to CloudFront cache keys improves the shared hit ratio by making every response unique.
Include every tracking query parameter in the CloudFront cache key even when it does not change the returned image bytes, assuming this improves hit ratio.
An overly fragmented cache key makes equivalent objects miss repeatedly, preventing efficient shared edge caching.
Increase origin request frequency by setting all CloudFront object TTLs to zero and assume the distribution still caches immutable objects efficiently.

Explanation

Correct Answer

Normalize unneeded cache-key dimensions and compare combined CloudFront and S3 fees after corrections.

Incorrect Answers

Needlessly fragmented cache keys produce more misses and origin fetches; edge caching depends on eligible reusable responses.

Unnecessary query-string key variation creates many cache variants for one image and reduces cache reuse, increasing origin S3 requests.

A zero TTL prevents useful shared caching. Choose a correct cache policy and exclude irrelevant query parameters to improve hit rate.

Question 685

A finance team plans a one-year Compute Savings Plan covering variable EC2 families, Fargate tasks and Lambda functions. Select THREE steps for a defensible commitment decision.

Buy only EC2 Instance Savings Plans for one family and expect their discounts to follow workloads moved to Fargate and Lambda.
Choose a conservative commitment amount that the organization can sustain through expected family and workload changes.
Recheck projected coverage and utilization against the supported cross-family and cross-Region Compute Savings Plan rules.
Buy a plan based solely on the highest single 10-minute demand spike.
Review the historical hourly eligible compute spend across all three service categories.
Assume the commitment can be cancelled without charge whenever infrastructure changes.

Explanation

Correct Answer

Unused committed spend still incurs charges, so the baseline must be reliable.

Coverage and utilization show whether the plan fits the changing eligible EC2/Fargate/Lambda usage.

The commitment should be grounded in actual eligible usage, not a speculative peak or one isolated service.

Incorrect Answers

EC2 Instance Savings Plans have family/Region restrictions and do not cover Fargate or Lambda, unlike eligible Compute Savings Plans.

A high brief spike is a poor basis for a continuous hourly financial commitment.

Savings Plans involve a fixed term and cannot simply be cancelled after purchasing.

Question 686

An enterprise will run a constant fleet of m7i instances in one AWS Region for three years with minimal family migration. Which savings commitment can provide high discounts for that stable family?

Use a Compute Savings Plan but assume it offers the maximum family-specific EC2 discount and cannot apply outside the selected Region.
Choose EC2 Spot Instances instead of a commitment and guarantee that every stable production server will run uninterrupted for three years.
Consider EC2 Instance Savings Plans for the chosen instance family/Region and minimum reliable hourly usage.
Reserve an equal number of EC2 Dedicated Hosts for the next three years and assume host-capacity reservations automatically apply the same family-specific Savings Plan discount.

Explanation

Correct Answer

A family-and-Region commitment is appropriate when instance family use is predictable and stable.

Incorrect Answers

Compute Savings Plans are more flexible across Regions and services; EC2 Instance Savings Plans generally offer the deeper commitment for stable family/Region usage.

Spot capacity is reclaimable by AWS and is not a fixed-term discount for an interruption-intolerant production fleet. Stable minimum eligible spend can support an EC2 Instance Savings Plan.

Dedicated Hosts are capacity/tenancy constructs with their own billing and eligible discounts. Reserving hosts does not automatically establish an EC2 Instance Savings Plan hourly spend commitment for the workload.

Question 687

An RDS PostgreSQL database uses a stable provisioned db.m6g class in production around the clock and is expected to remain for years. Which purchase option lowers eligible database compute costs?

Purchase an EC2 Instance Savings Plan for the RDS DB class because RDS instances share the same EC2 underlying hardware family names.
Evaluate the matching Amazon RDS Reserved Instance commitment against reliable provisioned database usage.
Use EC2 Reserved Instances for a similarly named m6g host and assume that discounts managed RDS PostgreSQL database instance-hours.
Purchase a short-lived RDS read replica instead of an RDS reservation and expect that merely adding a replica reduces the price of the original instance.

Explanation

Correct Answer

For the specified stable db.m6g (generation 6) provisioned RDS fleet, a matching eligible RDS Reserved Instance is a concrete fixed-workload discount option. Database Savings Plans generally target newer eligible generations (generation 7 and beyond) and supported serverless use, so do not assume the existing m6g charge is covered by that distinct product without an eligibility check.

Incorrect Answers

EC2 Instance Savings Plans do not discount managed RDS instances; eligible RDS RI or separate Database Savings Plans are the relevant instruments.

EC2 and RDS have separate eligible billing commitments; a reservation for compute instances does not reduce the provisioned RDS charge.

A new read replica is separately billed and does not discount the primary. Reserved DB instance billing discounts eligible existing provisioned instance usage.

Question 688

A nightly video transcoder can checkpoint, retry and tolerate termination with a loose completion deadline. Which EC2 purchasing model can minimize interruptible compute cost?

Purchase a Capacity Reservation and treat it as Spot pricing, while designing the transcoder to lose all progress on reclamation.
Use EC2 Spot capacity with interruption-aware workers, retry queues and diverse capacity pools.
Run AWS Batch exclusively on always-on On-Demand instances and assume all jobs automatically receive Spot prices.
Purchase a three-year fixed EC2 Reserved Instance commitment for an unpredictable nightly fleet and assume no costs accrue when the processing queue is empty.

Explanation

Correct Answer

Spot leverages spare capacity at lower rates but can be reclaimed, so only restartable work should depend on it.

Incorrect Answers

Capacity reservations secure On-Demand capacity, not the spare-capacity Spot discount; retry/checkpoint design is essential for interrupted jobs.

AWS Batch manages job scheduling; its costs depend on the selected underlying compute environment. Without Spot-backed capacity the jobs do not receive Spot rates.

Reserved Instance discounts are tied to long-term eligible usage/commitment and do not automatically track empty queue periods. Spot with checkpointing and retry can better fit interruptible consumption.

Question 689

A quarterly compliance report uses a special EC2 instance for 12 unpredictable hours and cannot tolerate Spot interruption. Which purchase pattern avoids a long commitment?

Buy a three-year hourly EC2 commitment solely to run the twelve-hour quarterly report and leave it unused otherwise.
Run an appropriately sized On-Demand Instance for the brief workload and stop/terminate afterward.
Buy a one-year Compute Savings Plan sized to the single quarterly twelve-hour peak and expect it to stop billing in all other hours.
Use EC2 Spot to guarantee the compliance report can finish without interruption because the job starts only once per quarter.

Explanation

Correct Answer

On-Demand pricing avoids a one- or three-year usage commitment for short irregular critical runs.

Incorrect Answers

A fixed spending commitment is poor economics for a brief unpredictable job; On-Demand charges only for usage without interruption risk.

Savings Plan hourly commitments remain due during unused hours; the brief quarterly run does not establish a reliable continuous commitment floor.

The frequency of the job does not eliminate Spot interruption risk. On-Demand fits a short, unpredictable job that cannot tolerate reclamation.

Question 690

An EC2 rightsizing recommendation would cut node capacity in half. The application has quiet weekends, rare month-end spikes and a memory-heavy batch. Select TWO measurements required before applying the change.

Apply rightsizing from only the minimum overnight CPU sample and omit month-end memory, disk and network demand measurements.
Load-test or stage the proposed smaller instance under the target SLOs before replacing production capacity.
Measure representative peak CPU, memory, disk and network needs including the month-end batch.
Review only the lowest overnight CPU utilization and ignore all other dimensions.
Discard recent memory-pressure and swap alerts to remove noisy data from the rightsizing recommendation.

Explanation

Correct Answer

A candidate size recommendation is not proof of acceptable worst-case latency or out-of-memory behavior.

EC2 instance suitability depends on more than average CPU; month-end working sets may dominate RAM or I/O.

Incorrect Answers

Rightsizing based on idle CPU can violate peak memory/I/O and application SLOs; representative peak metrics and validation are required.

A low idle CPU sample cannot establish enough RAM or throughput for rare production peaks.

Excluding adverse evidence would hide the exact bottleneck a downsizing must avoid.

Pass Your Amazon AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate SAA-C03 Exam Easy!

Question 680

Explanation

Correct Answer

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Question 681

Explanation

Correct Answer

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Question 682

Explanation

Correct Answer

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Question 683

Explanation

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Question 684

Explanation

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Question 685

Explanation

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Question 686

Explanation

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Question 687

Explanation

Correct Answer

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Question 688

Explanation

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Question 689

Explanation

Correct Answer

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Question 690

Explanation

Correct Answer

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AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate SAA-C03 Practice Tests