AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C02) — Question 330

A recently created startup built a three-tier web application. The front end has static content. The application layer is based on microservices. User data is stored as JSON documents that need to be accessed with low latency. The company expects regular traffic to be low during the first year, with peaks in traffic when it publicizes new features every month. The startup team needs to minimize operational overhead costs.
What should a solutions architect recommend to accomplish this?

Answer options

• A. Use Amazon S3 static website hosting to store and serve the front end. Use AWS Elastic Beanstalk for the application layer. Use Amazon DynamoDB to store user data.
• B. Use Amazon S3 static website hosting to store and serve the front end. Use Amazon Elastic KubernetesService (Amazon EKS) for the application layer. Use Amazon DynamoDB to store user data.
• C. Use Amazon S3 static website hosting to store and serve the front end. Use Amazon API Gateway and AWS Lambda functions for the application layer. Use Amazon DynamoDB to store user data.
• D. Use Amazon S3 static website hosting to store and serve the front end. Use Amazon API Gateway and AWS Lambda functions for the application layer. Use Amazon RDS with read replicas to store user data.

Correct answer: C

Explanation

Hosting the front end on Amazon S3 and using Amazon API Gateway with AWS Lambda for the microservices creates a fully serverless architecture that scales automatically and incurs zero costs when there is no traffic. Amazon DynamoDB is a serverless NoSQL database that natively supports JSON documents with single-digit millisecond latency, making it the perfect fit for this workload. Other options involving AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Amazon EKS, or Amazon RDS introduce unnecessary management overhead, provisioning complexity, and idle running costs.