SAA-C03 practice examsFinished
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate
Designing on AWS against the four things a design is judged on: whether it is secure, whether it survives failure, whether it performs, and what it costs.
What you get
Papers are cut from the bank and weighted like the real exam, and no question appears in two of them. Every wrong answer comes back on later days until you have it right.
What the exam covers
| Design Secure Architectures | 30% |
| Design Resilient Architectures | 26% |
| Design High-Performing Architectures | 24% |
| Design Cost-Optimized Architectures | 20% |
Two sample questions
1. An Auto Scaling group takes too long to serve traffic because instances need lengthy bootstrapping. Which feature reduces that delay?
- A smaller instance type with less memory
- A warm pool of pre-initialised instances — correct
- A longer health check grace period only
- Disabling the launch template entirely
Why: A warm pool keeps pre-initialised instances stopped and ready, cutting the time needed to bring capacity into service.
2. New orders must wait 5 minutes before workers see them, to allow cancellations. What fits?
- A shorter retention period
- An SQS delay queue — correct
- An SNS FIFO topic
- A larger message size
Why: Delay queues hide new messages for a set time before they become visible.
The real SAA-C03 exam
| Length | 130 minutes |
|---|---|
| Questions | 65 (50 scored, 15 unscored) |
| Pass mark | 720/1000 (scaled) |
| Price | $150 USD |
| Recommended before you sit it | None. About a year of hands-on experience designing on AWS is suggested. |
| Valid for | 3 years |
Exam facts as published by AWS; always check the vendor’s page before you book.
Study SAA-C03 with Chiron
Chiron is invitation-only while we are in beta, and nothing is for sale yet: invited accounts use every paper, drill and course note for free.