SAP-C02 Amazon Web Services AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional Free Practice Exam Questions (2026 Updated)

Migrating to an Amazon EKS cluster with managed node groups minimizes the effort required because:

EKS is fully managed, offering native Kubernetes support, making it easy to deploy the existing Kubernetes manifests without major changes.

Copying containers to Amazon ECR allows for fully managed, scalable container image storage in AWS, eliminating reliance on the on-premises container repository.

Deploying the existing manifests directly to EKS reuses all the existing configuration, such as service definitions, deployments, and scaling policies, simplifying migration.

Using Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL provides a fully managed, highly available database service that is compatible with PostgreSQL, reducing operational overhead compared to managing a self-hosted database.This approach leverages the power of AWS managed services while preserving the existing microservices and deployment practices, ensuring minimal disruption and fastest migration path.

Comprehensive and Detailed in Depth Explanation:

C is correct because AWS Transit Gateway is the most scalable and efficient way to interconnect hundreds of VPCs. By deploying one transit gateway per OU and sharing it with AWS RAM, each OU can isolate its network traffic and maintain internal communication without affecting or exposing other OUs.

A Direct Connect gateway is a globally available resource. You can create the Direct Connect gateway in any Region and access it from all other Regions. The following describe scenarios where you can use a Direct Connect gateway.https://docs.aws.amazon.com/directconnect/latest/UserGuide/direct-connect-gateways-intro.html

Set Up AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery:

Navigate to the AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (DRS) console.

Configure the Elastic Disaster Recovery service to replicate your on-premises VMware vSphere VMs to Amazon EC2 instances. This involves installing the AWS Replication Agent on your VMs.

Configure Replication Settings:

Define the replication settings, including the Amazon EC2 instance type and the Amazon EBS volume configuration. Ensure that the replication frequency meets your Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 5 minutes.

Monitor Data Replication:

Monitor the initial data replication process in the Elastic Disaster Recovery console. Once the initial sync is complete, the status should show as "Healthy" indicating that the data replication is up-to-date and within the RPO requirements.

Disaster Recovery (Failover):

In the event of a disaster, initiate a failover from the Elastic Disaster Recovery console. This will launch the replicated Amazon EC2 instances using the Amazon EBS volumes with the latest data.

Failback Process:

Once the on-premises environment is restored, perform a failback operation to synchronize the data from AWS back to your on-premises VMware environment. Use the failback client provided by AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery to ensure data consistency and minimal downtime during the failback process.

Using AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery provides a low-overhead, automated solution for disaster recovery that ensures minimal data loss and meets the RPO requirement of 5 minutes​(Amazon Web Services, Inc.)​​(AWS Documentation)​.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/prescriptive-guidance/latest/patterns/send-a-notification-when-an-iam-user-is-created.html

The workload must be deployed to a second AWS Region to reduce latency for users while maintaining business continuity. Because more than 95% of operations are read operations, the database layer must efficiently support low-latency reads in multiple Regions without introducing complex replication logic or sacrificing availability.

Amazon Aurora MySQL global database is specifically designed for multi-Region deployments. It provides a single primary Region for writes and up to multiple secondary Regions with read-only replicas that use low-latency, storage-based replication. This architecture is well suited for read-heavy workloads because read traffic can be served locally in each Region while writes are centralized. Aurora global database also supports fast recovery and promotes a secondary Region in the event of a primary Region failure, which satisfies business continuity requirements.

Option A correctly migrates the existing RDS for MySQL database to an Aurora MySQL global database and deploys application infrastructure (ALB and Auto Scaling group) in the second Region. This enables applications in each Region to read from the closest Aurora replica, reducing read latency while preserving a managed, highly available database architecture.

To route users to the closest healthy Region, DNS-based traffic management is required. Route 53 latency-based routing directs users to the endpoint (ALB) with the lowest latency from their location. This directly addresses the requirement to reduce application latency while also supporting multi-Region availability.

Option C provides this routing capability by configuring latency-based routing with Route 53 and pointing records to both ALBs. Route 53 continuously evaluates latency and health checks to route traffic appropriately, which supports both performance and business continuity.

Option B is not sufficient because migrating to a separate Multi-AZ database in another Region does not provide a shared data layer or managed cross-Region replication. This would require custom replication and conflict resolution and does not maintain a single logical dataset across Regions. CloudFront improves content delivery for static assets but does not solve database read latency or data consistency.

Option D uses geolocation routing, which routes traffic based on user location rather than actual measured latency. This is less precise than latency-based routing and does not automatically adapt to changing network conditions or Region health.

Option E introduces Aurora Serverless v2, which is not designed for multi-Region global database replication. Aurora Serverless v2 focuses on scaling capacity within a Region, not on reducing latency across Regions or providing managed global read replicas.

Therefore, migrating to an Aurora MySQL global database and using Route 53 latency-based routing provides low-latency reads, high availability, and business continuity with minimal operational overhead.

According to the AWS documentation1, to access a private API from a VPC, you need to do the following:

Create an interface VPC endpoint for API Gateway in your VPC. This creates a private connection between your VPC and API Gateway.

Attach an endpoint policy to the VPC endpoint that allows the execute-api:lnvoke action for your private API. This grants permission to invoke your API from the VPC.

Enable private DNS naming for the VPC endpoint. This allows you to use the same DNS names for your private APIs as you would for public APIs.

Configure a resource policy for your private API that allows access from the VPC endpoint. This controls who can access your API and under what conditions.

Use the API endpoint’s DNS names to access the API from your VPC. For example, https://api-id.execute-api.region.amazonaws.com/stage.

The CloudFront managed prefix list contains the IP ranges for all CloudFront edge locations. By updating the ALB security group ingress to allow access only from this prefix list, the web application will be accessible only by using the CloudFront endpoint. This solution requires the least amount of effort compared to the other options, which involve creating new resources or updating existing ones. This solution also avoids hard-coding IP addresses, which can change over time.

Deploy DataSync Agent:

Install the AWS DataSync agent as a VM in your Hyper-V environment. This agent facilitates the data transfer between your on-premises storage and AWS.

Configure Source and Destination:

Set up the source location to point to your on-premises NFS server where the image batches are stored.

Configure the destination location to be an Amazon S3 bucket with the Glacier Deep Archive storage class. This storage class is cost-effective for long-term storage with retrieval times of up to 12 hours.

Create DataSync Tasks:

Create and configure DataSync tasks to manage the data transfer. Schedule these tasks to run during non-business hours to minimize bandwidth usage during peak times. The tasks will handle the copying of data batches from the NFS server to the S3 bucket.

Set Bandwidth Limits:

In the DataSync configuration, set bandwidth limits to control the amount of data being transferred at any given time. This ensures that your network's performance is not adversely affected during business hours.

Delete On-Premises Data:

After successfully copying the data to S3 Glacier Deep Archive, configure the DataSync task to delete the data from your on-premises NFS server. This helps manage storage capacity on-premises and ensures data is securely archived on AWS.

This approach leverages AWS DataSync for efficient, secure, and automated data transfer, and S3 Glacier Deep Archive for cost-effective long-term storage.

References

AWS DataSync Overview【41】.

AWS Storage Blog on DataSync Migration【40】.

Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration Documentation【42】.

The company should create a new AWS WAF web ACL. The company should add a new rule that blocks requests that match the SQL database rule group. The company should set the web ACL to allow all other traffic that does not match those rules. The company should attach the web ACL to the ALB in front of the ECS tasks. This solution will meet the requirements because AWS WAF is a web application firewall that lets you monitor and control web requests that are forwarded to your web applications. You can use AWS WAF to define customizable web security rules that control which traffic can access your web applications and which traffic should be blocked1. By creating a new AWS WAF web ACL, the company can create a collection of rules that define the conditions for allowing or blocking web requests. By adding a new rule that blocks requests that match the SQL database rule group, the company can prevent SQL injection attacks from reaching the ECS API service. The SQL database rule group is a managed rule group provided by AWS that contains rules to protect against common SQL injection attack patterns2. By setting the web ACL to allow all other traffic that does not match those rules, the company can ensure that legitimate traffic can access the API service. By attaching the web ACL to the ALB in front of the ECS tasks, the company can apply the web security rules to all requests that are forwarded by the load balancer.

The other options are not correct because:

Creating a new AWS WAF Bot Control implementation would not prevent SQL injection attacks from reaching the ECS API service. AWS WAF Bot Control is a feature that gives you visibility and control over common and pervasive bot traffic that can consume excess resources, skew metrics, cause downtime, or perform other undesired activities. However, it does not protect against SQL injection attacks, which are malicious attempts to execute unauthorized SQL statements against your database3.

Creating a new AWS WAF web ACL to monitor the HTTP requests and HTTPS requests that are forwarded to the ALB in front of the ECS tasks would not prevent SQL injection attacks from reaching the ECS API service. Monitoring mode is a feature that enables you to evaluate how your rules would perform without actually blocking any requests. However, this mode does not provide any protection against attacks, as it only logs and counts requests that match your rules4.

Creating a new AWS WAF web ACL and creating a new empty IP set in AWS WAF would not prevent SQL injection attacks from reaching the ECS API service. An IP set is a feature that enables you to specify a list of IP addresses or CIDR blocks that you want to allow or block based on their source IP address. However, this approach would not be effective or efficient against SQL injection attacks, as it would require constantly updating the IP set with new IP addresses of attackers, and it would not block attackers who use proxies or VPNs.

step function could run a scheduled task when triggered by eventbrige, but why would you add that layer of complexity just to run aws batch when you could directly invoke it through eventbridge. The link provided - https://aws.amazon.com/pt/blogs/compute/orchestrating-high-performance-computing-with-aws-step-functions-and-aws-batch/ makes sense only for HPC, this is a single instance that needs to be run

Deploying the shared libraries and custom classes to a Docker image and uploading the image to Amazon Elastic Container Registry (Amazon ECR) and creating a Lambda layer that uses the Docker image as the source. Then, deploying the API's Lambda functions as Zip packages and configuring the packages to use the Lambda layer would meet the requirements for simplifying the deployment and optimizing for code reuse.

A Lambda layer is a distribution mechanism for libraries, custom runtimes, and other function dependencies. It allows you to manage your in-development function code separately from your dependencies, this way you can easily update your dependencies without having to update your entire function code.

By deploying the shared libraries and custom classes to a Docker image and uploading the image to Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR), it makes it easy to manage and version the dependencies. This way, the company can use the same version of the dependencies across different Lambda functions.

By creating a Lambda layer that uses the Docker image as the source, the company can configure the API's Lambda functions to use the layer, reducing the need to include the dependencies in each function package, and making it easy to update the dependencies across all functions at once.

AWS DataSync is an online data transfer service that is designed to help customers get their data to and from AWS quickly, easily, and securely. Using DataSync, you can copy data from your on-premises NFS or SMB shares directly to Amazon S3, Amazon EFS, or Amazon FSx for Windows File Server. DataSync uses a purpose-built, parallel transfer protocol for speeds up to 10x faster than open source tools. DataSync also has built-in verification of data both in flight and at rest, so you can be confident that your data was transferred successfully. DataSync allows you to apply filters to select which files or folders to transfer, based on file name, size, or modification time. You can also schedule your DataSync tasks to run daily, weekly, or monthly, or on demand. DataSync is integrated with AWS Direct Connect, so you can take advantage of your existing private connection to AWS. DataSync is also a fully managed service, so you do not need to provision, configure, or maintain any infrastructure for data transfer.

Option A is incorrect because the Amazon S3 CopyObject API operation does not support filtering or scheduling, and it would require you to write and maintain custom scripts to automate the backup process.

Option B is incorrect because AWS Backup does not support filtering or transferring data from on-premises sources to Amazon S3. AWS Backup is a fully managed backup service that makes it easy to centralize and automate the backup of data across AWS services.

Option D is incorrect because AWS Snowball Edge is a physical device that is used for offline data transfer when network bandwidth is limited or unavailable. It is not suitable for daily backups or incremental transfers. AWS Snowball Edge also does not support filtering or scheduling.

1: Considering four different replication options for data in Amazon S3

2: Protect your file and backup archives using AWS DataSync and Amazon S3 Glacier

3: AWS DataSync FAQs

Creating an Amazon EventBridge rule that runs every business day in the evening to stop instances and another rule that runs every business day in the morning to start instances based on the tag will reduce costs with the least operational effort. This approach allows for instances to be stopped during non-business hours when they are not in use, reducing the costs associated with running them. It also allows for instances to be started again in the morning when the development and testing teams need to use them.

The best solution is to create an AWS WAF web ACL and configure a rule to block any requests that do not originate from the specified country. This will ensure that only users from the allowed country can access the application. AWS WAF also provides logging capabilities that can capture the access requests that have been blocked. This solution requires the least possible maintenance as it does not involve updating IP ranges or security group rules. References: [AWS WAF Developer Guide], [AWS Shield Developer Guide]

The best solution is to modify the Kinesis Data Firehose configuration and Athena table definition to partition the data by date and time. This will reduce the amount of data scanned by Athena and improve the query performance. Changing the Athena query to view the relevant partitions will also help to filter out unnecessary data. This solution requires minimal operational overhead as it does not involve creating additional resources or changing the log format. References: [AWS WAF Developer Guide], [Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose User Guide], [Amazon Athena User Guide]

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/privatelink/vpc-endpoints-access.html

https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/vpc-reduce-nat-gateway-transfer-costs/

VPC endpoint policies enable you to control access by either attaching a policy to a VPC endpoint or by using additional fields in a policy that is attached to an IAM user, group, or role to restrict access to only occur via the specified VPC endpoint

https://aws.amazon.com/es/blogs/mt/implement-aws-resource-tagging-strategy-using-aws-tag-policies-and-service-control-policies-scps/

 The company should configure a cross-Region read replica for the RDS database in the new Region. The company should change the Route 53 record to latency-based routing to connect to the API Gateway API. This solution will meet the requirements because a cross-Region read replica is a feature that enables you to create a MariaDB, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, or SQL Server read replica in a different Region from the source DB instance. You can use cross-Region read replicas to improve availability and disaster recovery, scale out globally, or migrate an existing database to a new Region1. By creating a cross-Region read replica for the RDS database in the new Region, the company can have a standby copy of its primary database that can serve read-only traffic from users in Europe. A latency-based routing policy is a feature that enables you to route traffic based on the latency between your users and your resources. You can use latency-based routing to route traffic to the resource that provides the best latency2. By changing the Route 53 record to latency-based routing, the company can minimize latency for users who download reports by connecting them to the API Gateway API in the Region that provides the best response time.

The other options are not correct because:

Using AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) to replicate the primary database in the original Region to the database in the new Region would not be as cost-effective or simple as using a cross-Region read replica. AWS DMS is a service that enables you to migrate relational databases, data warehouses, NoSQL databases, and other types of data stores. You can use AWS DMS to perform one-time migrations or continuous data replication with high availability and consolidate databases intoa petabyte-scale data warehouse3. However, AWS DMS requires more configuration and management than creating a cross-Region read replica, which is fully managed by Amazon RDS. AWS DMS also incurs additional charges for replication instances and tasks.

Creating an Amazon API Gateway Data API service integration with Amazon Redshift would not help with disaster recovery or minimizing latency. The Data API is a feature that enables you to query your Amazon Redshift cluster using HTTP requests, without needing a persistent connection or a SQL client. It is useful forbuilding applications that interact with Amazon Redshift, but not for replicating or recovering data from an RDS database.

Creating an AWS Data Exchange datashare by connecting AWS Data Exchange to the Redshift cluster would not help with disaster recovery or minimizing latency. AWS Data Exchange is a service that makes it easy for AWS customers to exchange data in the cloud. You can use AWS Data Exchange to subscribe to a diverse selection of third-party data products or offer your own data products to other AWS customers. A datashare is a feature that enables you to share live and secure access to your Amazon Redshift data across your accounts or with third parties without copying or moving the underlying data. It is useful for sharing query results and views with other users, but not for replicating or recovering data from an RDS database.

Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) on AWS Fargate is a fully managed service that allows you to run containers without having to manage the underlying infrastructure. When you launch tasks on Fargate, resources are automatically allocated based on the number of tasks running, which reduces the operational overhead.

Using ECS on Fargate allows you to assign custom tags to tasks using the --tags option in the run-task command, as described in the documentation:https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/ecs/run-task.htmlYou can also set enableECSManagedTags to true, which allows the service to automatically add the cluster name and service name as tags.https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECS/latest/developerguide/task-placement-constraints.html#tag-based-scheduling

It is the fastest when it comes to rollback and deploying changes every hour

Option C is correct because leveraging Amazon Kinesis Data Streams and AWS Lambda to ingest and process the raw data resolves the issues permanently and enable growth as new sensors are provisioned. Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is a serverless streaming data service that simplifies the capture, processing, and storage of data streams at any scale. Kinesis Data Streams can handle any amount of streaming data and process data from hundreds of thousands of sources with very low latency. AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. Lambda can be triggered by Kinesis Data Streams events and process the data records in real time. Lambda can also scale automatically based on the incoming data volume. By using Kinesis Data Streams and Lambda, the company can reduce the load on the API servers and improve the performance and scalability of the data ingestion and processing layer3

Option E is correct because re-architecting the database tier to use Amazon DynamoDB instead of an RDS MySQL DB instance resolves the issues permanently and enable growth as new sensors are provisioned. Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed key-value and document database that delivers single-digit millisecond performance at any scale. DynamoDB supports auto scaling, which automatically adjusts read and write capacity based on actual traffic patterns. DynamoDB also supports on-demand capacity mode, which instantly accommodates up to double the previous peak traffic on a table. By using DynamoDB instead of RDS MySQL DB instance, the company can eliminate high write latency and improve scalability and performance of the database tier.

The correct answer is B. This option uses IAM Identity Center to create permission sets that map to the existing IAM roles in each account. This way, the company can leverage the existing policies and roles that are already configured for the expected activities of each group of users in each account. The company also needs to create a customer managed policy that allows the group to assume the roles and attach it to thepermission set. This policy grants the necessary permissions for IAM Identity Center to assume the roles on behalf of the users. Finally, the company can assign user access to the AWS accounts in IAM Identity Center, which will automatically create IAM users and groups in each account based on the permission sets.

Option A is incorrect because it requires creating new policies in each account and giving them the same name. This is not necessary and adds complexity and overhead. The company can use the existing IAM roles and policies that are already configured for each account.

Option C is incorrect because it requires creating new policies in each account and giving them unique names. This is also not necessary and adds complexity and overhead. The company can use the existing IAM roles and policies that are already configured for each account.

Option D is incorrect because it requires adding the OU to the accounts configuration in IAM Identity Center. This is not supported by IAM Identity Center, which only allows adding individual accounts or all accounts in an organization.

This solution will allow the external auditors to have read-only access to the company's AWS account while being compliant with AWS security best practices. By creating an IAM role, which is a secure and flexible way of granting access to AWS resources, and trusting the auditors' AWS account, the company can ensure that the auditors only have the permissions that are required for their role and nothing more. Assigning a unique external ID to the role's trust policy, it will ensure that only the auditors' AWS account can assume the role.

The company should create a second target group that is referenced by the ALB. The company should deploy the new logic to EC2 instances in this new target group. The company should update the ALB listener rule to use weighted target groups. The company should configure ALB target group stickiness. This solution will meet the requirements because weighted target groups are a feature that enables you to distribute traffic across multiple target groups using a single listener rule. You can specify a weight for each target group, which determines the percentage of requests that are routed to that target group. For example, if you specify two target groups, each with a weight of 10, each target group receives half the requests1. By creating a second target group and deploying the new logic to EC2 instances in this new target group, the company can have two versions of its business logic running in parallel. By updating the ALB listener rule to use weighted target groups,the company can control how much traffic is sent to each version. By configuring ALB target group stickiness, the company can ensure that a customer uses the same version of the business logic during the testing window. Target group stickiness is a feature that enables you to bind a user’s session to a specific target within a target group for the duration of the session2.

The other options are not correct because:

Creating a second ALB and deploying the new logic to a set of EC2 instances in a new Auto Scaling group would not be as cost-effective or simple as using weighted target groups. A second ALB would incur additional charges and require more configuration and management. Updating the Route 53 record to use weighted routing would not ensure that a customer uses the same version of the business logic during the testing window, as DNS caching could affect how requests are routed.

Creating a new launch configuration for the Auto Scaling group and replacing it on the Auto Scaling group would not allow for gradual traffic shifting between versions. A launch configuration is a template that an Auto Scaling group uses to launch EC2 instances. You can specify information such as the AMI ID, instance type, key pair, security groups, and block device mapping for your instances3. However, replacing the launch configuration on an Auto Scaling group would affect all instances in that group, not just 10% of customers.

Creating a second Auto Scaling group and changing the ALB routing algorithm to least outstanding requests (LOR) would not allow for controlled traffic shifting between versions. A second Auto Scaling group would require more configuration and management. The LOR routing algorithm is a feature that enables you to route traffic based on how quickly targets respond to requests. The load balancer selects a target from the target group with the fewest outstanding requests4. However, this algorithm does not take into account customer sessions or weights.