AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) — Question 711

A company has users all around the world accessing its HTTP-based application deployed on Amazon EC2 instances in multiple AWS Regions. The company wants to improve the availability and performance of the application. The company also wants to protect the application against common web exploits that may affect availability, compromise security, or consume excessive resources. Static IP addresses are required.

What should a solutions architect recommend to accomplish this?

Answer options

• A. Put the EC2 instances behind Network Load Balancers (NLBs) in each Region. Deploy AWS WAF on the NLBs. Create an accelerator using AWS Global Accelerator and register the NLBs as endpoints.
• B. Put the EC2 instances behind Application Load Balancers (ALBs) in each Region. Deploy AWS WAF on the ALBs. Create an accelerator using AWS Global Accelerator and register the ALBs as endpoints.
• C. Put the EC2 instances behind Network Load Balancers (NLBs) in each Region. Deploy AWS WAF on the NLBs. Create an Amazon CloudFront distribution with an origin that uses Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing to route requests to the NLBs.
• D. Put the EC2 instances behind Application Load Balancers (ALBs) in each Region. Create an Amazon CloudFront distribution with an origin that uses Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing to route requests to the ALBs. Deploy AWS WAF on the CloudFront distribution.

Correct answer: B

Explanation

AWS Global Accelerator satisfies the static IP requirement by providing two static IP addresses and improves availability and performance by routing traffic over the AWS global network. AWS WAF can be integrated directly with Application Load Balancers (ALBs) to protect the HTTP-based application, whereas Network Load Balancers (NLBs) do not natively support AWS WAF. Amazon CloudFront is not suitable here because it does not offer static IP addresses for client-facing entry points.