AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate | Practice Tests

Are you Getting ready for SAA-C03, the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate exam?  Then you have come to the right place. These practice tests are designed to help you Ace the certification exam.

These practice tests have been authored by Abhishek Kumar who has 11 years of experience in the Software Industry and is currently working as an AWS infrastructure consultant in a multinational company. He is AWS Certified Solution Architect Associate and AWS Certified Security Specialist.

The questions are of the same level and complexity as in the real AWS certification exam. All the questions have a detailed explanation of the correct and incorrect options. If an answer is correct, an exhaustive explanation is provided along with a diagram. If an option is incorrect, a detailed explanation is provided so that you have a clear understanding of the underlying subject.

This course is designed in such a way that you will not need any other further reading material or practice tests to clear the exam. This course extensively covers all the topics of the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) exam.

Sample Question:

A company’s HTTP application is behind a Network Load Balancer (NLB). The NLB’s target group is configured to use an Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling group with multiple EC2 instances that run the web service.

The company notices that the NLB is not detecting HTTP errors for the application. These errors require a manual restart of the EC2 instances that run the web service. The company needs to improve the application’s availability without writing custom scripts or code.

What should a solutions architect do to meet these requirements?

1. Enable HTTP health checks on the NLB, supplying the URL of the company’s application.
2. Add a cron job to the EC2 instances to check the local application’s logs once each minute. If HTTP errors are detected the application will restart.
3. Replace the NLB with an Application Load Balancer. Enable HTTP health checks by supplying the URL of the company’s application. Configure an Auto Scaling action to replace unhealthy instances.
4. Create an Amazon Cloud Watch alarm that monitors the UnhealthyHostCount metric for the NLB. Configure an Auto Scaling action to replace unhealthy instances when the alarm is in the ALARM state.
   

Explanation:

Option A is Incorrect:
Enabling HTTP health checks on the Network Load Balancer (NLB) by supplying the URL of the company’s application would detect any HTTP errors, but it would still require a manual restart of the EC2 instances. The goal is to improve the application’s availability without manual intervention.

Option B is Incorrect:
Adding a cron job to the EC2 instances to check the local application’s logs once each minute and restarting the application if HTTP errors are detected would improve the availability of the application, but it would require writing custom scripts or code. This is not in line with the requirement of not writing custom scripts or code.

Option C is Correct:
This solution replaces the Network Load Balancer (NLB) with an Application Load Balancer (ALB), which provides more advanced health-checking capabilities for HTTP applications. By enabling HTTP health checks on the ALB and supplying the URL of the company’s application, the ALB will automatically detect HTTP errors and take appropriate actions to improve the application’s availability. This can be achieved without writing custom scripts or code, which is one of the requirements of the company. It also configures an Auto Scaling action to replace unhealthy instances, further improving the application’s availability.

Option D is Incorrect:
Creating an Amazon Cloud Watch alarm that monitors the UnhealthyHostCount metric for the NLB and configuring an Auto Scaling action to replace unhealthy instances when the alarm is in the ALARM state would detect HTTP errors, but it would still require a manual replacement of the instances. The goal is to improve the application’s availability without manual intervention.

Good luck with your AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate exam and happy learning !!