AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) — Question 1016

A company runs an on-premises application on a Kubernetes cluster. The company recently added millions of new customers. The company's existing on-premises infrastructure is unable to handle the large number of new customers. The company needs to migrate the on-premises application to the AWS Cloud.

The company will migrate to an Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) cluster. The company does not want to manage the underlying compute infrastructure for the new architecture on AWS.

Which solution will meet these requirements with the LEAST operational overhead?

Answer options

• A. Use a self-managed node to supply compute capacity. Deploy the application to the new EKS cluster.
• B. Use managed node groups to supply compute capacity. Deploy the application to the new EKS cluster.
• C. Use AWS Fargate to supply compute capacity. Create a Fargate profile. Use the Fargate profile to deploy the application.
• D. Use managed node groups with Karpenter to supply compute capacity. Deploy the application to the new EKS cluster.

Correct answer: C

Explanation

AWS Fargate provides a serverless compute engine for Amazon EKS, which completely removes the operational burden of provisioning, configuring, and scaling EC2 instances. While managed node groups and Karpenter reduce some EC2 management tasks, they still require the user to maintain the underlying nodes. Using a Fargate profile allows the company to run their Kubernetes pods without managing any compute infrastructure, yielding the lowest operational overhead.