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Quizzes > Computers & IT

AWS Solutions Architect Associate Practice Exam

Quick, free associate practice test to check your AWS skills. Instant results.

Editorial: Review CompletedCreated By: Shirley KlootwijkUpdated Aug 26, 2025
Difficulty: Moderate
Questions: 20
Learning OutcomesStudy Material
Colorful paper art depicting quiz for Solutions Architect Associate Practice Test

This AWS Solutions Architect Associate practice exam helps you check your AWS architecture skills with 15 scenario questions and instant feedback. Use it to spot gaps before the exam and focus your study. If you are building fundamentals, try our cloud practitioner practice test or reinforce core concepts with a cloud computing practice test.

Which AWS service is best suited for scalable object storage with high durability?
Amazon Glacier
Amazon EBS
Amazon S3
Amazon EFS
Amazon S3 is designed for scalable object storage with 99.999999999% durability and high availability. EBS provides block storage, EFS provides a file system, and Glacier is optimized for archival. S3 is the correct choice for general-purpose object storage.
Which feature ensures a relational RDS instance automatically fails over to a standby in a different Availability Zone?
Read replica
Multi-AZ deployment
Auto Scaling
Manual snapshot
Multi-AZ deployments create a synchronous standby replica in another AZ and automate failover in case of a primary issue. Read replicas are for read scaling, snapshots are backups, and Auto Scaling is for EC2 instances, not RDS failover.
In AWS IAM, what construct allows grouping multiple users for collective permission assignment?
IAM Policy
IAM Role
IAM Group
IAM User
An IAM Group is a container for IAM users and allows you to apply policies to multiple users at once. Roles are for temporary access, policies define permissions, and users are individual identities.
AWS Regions are composed of multiple Availability Zones. What is the minimum number of AZs in each region?
Ten
At least two
Four
One
AWS requires each region to have at least two Availability Zones to support high availability. Having only one would not meet AWS's regional fault tolerance requirements.
To achieve cost optimization for steady-state EC2 usage, which purchasing option provides the greatest discount?
On-Demand Instances
Dedicated Hosts
Reserved Instances
Spot Instances
Reserved Instances offer significant cost savings (up to 75%) for predictable, steady-state usage by committing to a term length. On-Demand is more expensive, Spot is for interruptible workloads, and Dedicated Hosts incur extra costs.
When designing an auto-scaling multi-tier application on AWS, which service dynamically adjusts the number of EC2 instances based on demand?
EC2 Auto Scaling
Amazon CloudWatch
Elastic Load Balancer
AWS Lambda
EC2 Auto Scaling automatically adjusts the number of instances according to defined policies. The load balancer distributes traffic, Lambda is serverless compute, and CloudWatch monitors metrics.
Which AWS service offers a fully managed decoupling mechanism using message queues?
Amazon SNS
Amazon SQS
Amazon MQ
AWS Kinesis
Amazon SQS is a fully managed message queuing service for decoupling components. SNS is pub/sub, MQ is managed ActiveMQ, and Kinesis is for streaming data.
To deliver static website content to global users with low latency, which service should be used?
VPC Endpoint
Amazon CloudFront
AWS Global Accelerator
Amazon Route 53
Amazon CloudFront is a CDN that caches content at edge locations for low-latency delivery. Global Accelerator optimizes TCP/UDP traffic, Route 53 is DNS, and VPC Endpoints provide private connectivity.
Which database service provides serverless scaling with no capacity provisioning required?
Amazon Aurora
Amazon Redshift
Amazon RDS MySQL
Amazon DynamoDB
Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database that automatically scales throughput and storage without provisioning. Aurora and RDS require instance management, and Redshift is a data warehouse.
For infrequently accessed data that requires immediate retrieval, which S3 storage class is most cost-effective?
S3 One Zone-IA
S3 Standard-Infrequent Access
S3 Glacier
S3 Standard
S3 Standard-IA offers lower storage costs for infrequently accessed data with millisecond retrieval. Glacier is archival with retrieval delays, Standard is for frequent access, and One Zone-IA has lower durability.
To centrally manage and rotate database credentials for applications, which service should you use?
AWS IAM
AWS Secrets Manager
AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store
AWS Certificate Manager
AWS Secrets Manager is designed for storing, managing, and rotating secrets such as database credentials. Parameter Store can store parameters but does not natively rotate secrets, ACM manages certificates, IAM manages identities.
Which AWS feature controls traffic at the subnet level and is stateless, requiring explicit rules for both inbound and outbound traffic?
VPC Peering
Network ACLs
AWS WAF
Security Groups
Network ACLs (stateless) operate at the subnet level and require separate inbound and outbound rules. Security Groups are stateful, WAF protects applications, and VPC Peering connects VPCs.
Which service provides protection against common DDoS attacks at the network and application layers?
AWS Firewall Manager
AWS Shield
Amazon GuardDuty
AWS WAF
AWS Shield provides automatic DDoS protection for network and application layers. WAF is for application-layer traffic filtering, Firewall Manager centralizes firewall rules, GuardDuty offers threat detection.
Which AWS tool provides an estimate of monthly costs and resource usage before deployment?
AWS Pricing Calculator
AWS Cost Explorer
AWS Cost and Usage Report
AWS Budgets
The AWS Pricing Calculator helps estimate costs and usage for planned resources. Cost Explorer analyzes historical usage, Budgets sets spending thresholds, and Cost and Usage Reports provide detailed records.
Which AWS service allows you to define and provision infrastructure as code via JSON or YAML templates?
AWS CodeDeploy
AWS Config
AWS CloudFormation
AWS OpsWorks
AWS CloudFormation uses templates in JSON or YAML to provision and manage AWS resources as code. CodeDeploy automates code deployments, Config monitors resource configurations, and OpsWorks manages Chef/Puppet.
To deploy a globally distributed relational database with low-latency reads across multiple AWS regions, which feature should be used?
Amazon Aurora Global Database
Amazon RDS Multi-AZ
Amazon DynamoDB Global Tables
Amazon Redshift Spectrum
Amazon Aurora Global Database supports cross-region read replicas with low latency for global read workloads. RDS Multi-AZ is for availability, DynamoDB is NoSQL, and Redshift Spectrum is for querying data in S3.
What is the best approach to enforce the principle of least privilege for a Lambda function that accesses only a specific S3 bucket?
Create an IAM role with a policy granting only required bucket actions
Embed AWS credentials in the Lambda code
Use root account credentials for the function
Attach full S3 access to the function role
Creating an IAM role with a policy that grants only the necessary S3 bucket actions ensures least privilege. Embedding credentials is insecure, full S3 access is excessive, and root credentials violate best practices.
You need to achieve minimal downtime and data loss for a critical RDS database in case of failure. Which configuration offers the lowest RPO and RTO?
Enable automated backups
Deploy RDS with Multi-AZ synchronous replication
Schedule frequent manual snapshots
Use a cross-region read replica
Multi-AZ synchronous replication provides automatic failover with minimal data loss and downtime. Cross-region replicas are asynchronous, snapshots require restore time, and automated backups also need restore processes.
For a fault-tolerant batch processing application that can tolerate interruptions, which EC2 purchasing option provides the lowest compute cost?
Dedicated Hosts
On-Demand Instances
Reserved Instances
Spot Instances
Spot Instances offer the lowest cost by using spare capacity, suitable for interruptible workloads. On-Demand has no commitment, Reserved lowers cost for steady-state, and Dedicated Hosts are more expensive.
To automatically route users to healthy endpoints in different AWS regions during an outage, which DNS feature should be used?
Geolocation routing
Round-robin routing
Route 53 failover routing policy
Latency routing
Route 53 failover routing uses health checks to direct traffic away from unhealthy endpoints, ensuring availability during outages. Round-robin does not consider health, geolocation serves by location, and latency routing optimizes for latency but not health.
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Learning Outcomes

  1. Analyze AWS service selection scenarios for optimal architecture
  2. Evaluate trade-offs in high-availability and fault-tolerant designs
  3. Demonstrate understanding of cost-optimization strategies in cloud solutions
  4. Identify key security best practices for AWS deployments
  5. Apply design principles to real-world infrastructure scenarios

Cheat Sheet

  1. Master Core AWS Services - Get comfortable with EC2 for compute power, S3 for scalable storage, RDS for managed databases, and VPC for network isolation. These are the essential building blocks of any AWS solution, so knowing them inside out lets you mix and match like a cloud architect Lego master.
  2. Design Resilient Architectures - Learn to build multi-tier systems and decouple components using queues, events, and auto-scaling groups. This makes your apps fault-tolerant and highly available, so they can bounce back quickly when things go wrong.
  3. Optimize Costs - Explore On-Demand, Reserved, and Spot Instances to find the best price-performance balance. Then use AWS Cost Explorer to track spending trends and spot savings opportunities before your budget hits the roof.
  4. Apply Security Best Practices - Dive into IAM roles and policies for fine-grained access control, enable encryption everywhere, and configure security groups and network ACLs. Think of these measures as the fortress walls around your data and applications.
  5. Build High-Performance Systems - Select the right storage tiers, network setups, and database engines to match workload demands. Elasticity and scalability ensure your system scales up for busy days and scales down when traffic dips - no wasted resources here!
  6. Understand the Shared Responsibility Model - AWS secures the cloud infrastructure, while you secure everything you put in it (data, configurations, access). Clearly dividing these duties helps you maintain compliance and stamp out security blind spots.
  7. Use the Well-Architected Framework - Follow AWS's five pillars - security, performance, reliability, cost optimization, and operational excellence - to audit and improve any workload. It's your ultimate checklist for rock-solid cloud design.
  8. Plan Disaster Recovery - Compare Backup & Restore, Pilot Light, Warm Standby, and Multi-Site Active/Active strategies. Having the right plan means even major outages turn into minor blips, keeping your services online and customers happy.
  9. Enable Monitoring & Logging - Use CloudWatch to track metrics, set alarms, and build dashboards, and CloudTrail to audit every API call. This dynamic duo gives you full visibility into performance and security events.
  10. Practice with Sample Exams - Work through real-world scenarios and exam questions to get a feel for the test format. The more you practice, the smoother you'll navigate tricky questions on exam day.
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