Free AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Practice Questions

Sample Practice Questions

Try these 10 sample questions from the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate practice bank. Each includes the answer and explanation. Continue with the interactive practice above to review the full question set.

1. 1A company wants to assign the same baseline workforce permissions to users across several AWS accounts in its organization. Which IAM Identity Center design supports this?

   1. A. Create a permission set and assign it to the users or groups in each required account.
   2. B. Create one IAM user in each account and copy its access keys to the workforce.
   3. C. Attach a service control policy to each account to grant the workforce permissions.
   4. D. Attach one S3 bucket policy in each account to define workforce account access.

   Answer: A

   Explanation: AWS states, "You can create a single permission set and assign it to multiple AWS accounts within your organization." Assigning that permission set to the required users or groups gives a centralized baseline for those accounts; the other options confuse credentials, permission guardrails, or resource policies with workforce account assignments.

   Reference: Configure access to AWS accounts — Assigning AWS account access

2. 2An order intake service must accept requests during processing spikes while workers consume jobs at their own pace. Which AWS component most directly decouples the two tiers?

   1. A. An Amazon SQS queue between the service and workers.
   2. B. A direct synchronous call to every worker.
   3. C. An ALB that forwards each order to one worker.
   4. D. An IAM policy attached to the workers.

   Answer: A

   Explanation: AWS states, "Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) offers a secure, durable, and available hosted queue that lets you integrate and decouple distributed software systems and components." An SQS queue buffers work between independently scaled producers and consumers.

   Reference: What is Amazon Simple Queue Service? — What is Amazon Simple Queue Service?

3. 3An application needs more S3 GET throughput than one partitioned prefix provides. Which data layout can increase parallel read capacity?

   1. A. Distribute objects across multiple prefixes and read in parallel.
   2. B. Place every object under one prefix and serialize GETs.
   3. C. Disable multipart upload for all objects.
   4. D. Move objects to S3 One Zone-IA solely for request scaling.

   Answer: A

   Explanation: AWS states, "You can increase your read or write performance by using parallelization." Parallel requests across prefixes can increase aggregate request throughput.

   Reference: Best practices design patterns: optimizing Amazon S3 performance — Best practices design patterns: optimizing Amazon S3 performance

4. 4An S3 dataset has unpredictable access frequency. The application requires immediate access even when an object has been idle, and optional archive tiers will not be enabled. Which storage class automatically changes access tiers as patterns change?

   1. A. S3 Intelligent-Tiering
   2. B. S3 Standard-IA
   3. C. S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval
   4. D. S3 One Zone-IA

   Answer: A

   Explanation: AWS states, "S3 Intelligent-Tiering is the ideal storage class when you want to optimize storage costs for data that has unknown or changing access patterns." Its automatic low-latency tiers meet the unpredictable-access condition; the other classes do not automatically adapt per object.

   Reference: Understanding and managing Amazon S3 storage classes — Storage classes for automatically optimizing data with changing or unknown access patterns

5. 5An administrator attaches an AWS Organizations service control policy (SCP) that allows an action to a member account. The IAM principal has no policy granting that action. What is the result?

   1. A. The action is granted to all roles but not to IAM users.
   2. B. The SCP itself grants the action to the principal.
   3. C. The action remains unavailable until an applicable permission policy grants it.
   4. D. The SCP grants the action only to the account root user.

   Answer: C

   Explanation: AWS states, "SCPs do not grant permissions to the IAM users and IAM roles in your organization." An SCP sets a ceiling on available permissions; it cannot supply a missing allow in an IAM or resource policy.

   Reference: Service control policies (SCPs) — Service control policies (SCPs)

6. 6An SQS consumer receives a message and needs other consumers to avoid processing the same message while it works. Which queue behavior provides that temporary protection?

   1. A. A queue policy permanently removes the message.
   2. B. The visibility timeout hides the message during processing.
   3. C. Message retention deletes the message on receipt.
   4. D. A topic subscription blocks every other consumer.

   Answer: B

   Explanation: AWS states, "While message A is being processed, it remains in the queue and isn't returned to subsequent receive requests for the duration of the visibility timeout." The visibility timeout temporarily hides the received message; the consumer still must delete it after success.

   Reference: What is Amazon Simple Queue Service? — Message lifecycle

7. 7An S3 workload abruptly raises its request rate and briefly receives 503 Slow Down responses. What does AWS say about scaling to the new rate?

   1. A. Every 503 means the bucket has lost object durability.
   2. B. Scaling is gradual, so the transient 503 errors can dissipate when scaling completes.
   3. C. S3 never scales request rates after a prefix is created.
   4. D. The bucket permanently caps requests at its original rate.

   Answer: B

   Explanation: AWS states, "While Amazon S3 is scaling to your new higher request rate, you may see some 503 (Slow Down) errors." The errors can appear during adaptation to a higher request rate; they do not by themselves indicate durability loss.

   Reference: Best practices design patterns: optimizing Amazon S3 performance — Best practices design patterns: optimizing Amazon S3 performance

8. 8A recoverable secondary copy in S3 is accessed rarely. The team accepts loss of the copy if its Availability Zone is destroyed and wants lower storage cost than Standard-IA. Which class fits?

   1. A. S3 Express One Zone
   2. B. S3 One Zone-IA
   3. C. S3 Standard-IA
   4. D. S3 Standard

   Answer: B

   Explanation: AWS states, "S3 One Zone-IA (ONEZONE_IA) – Amazon S3 stores the object data in only one Availability Zone, which makes it less expensive than S3 Standard-IA." One Zone-IA satisfies the stated resilience tradeoff. Standard-IA retains multi-AZ resilience; Standard and Express One Zone target different access patterns.

   Reference: Understanding and managing Amazon S3 storage classes — Storage classes for infrequently accessed objects

9. 9A security team needs an organization level permission guardrail for IAM principals in member accounts. Which account is outside the effect of an SCP?

   1. A. The organization's management account.
   2. B. A member account under an organizational unit.
   3. C. A member account in a delegated administrator role.
   4. D. A member account directly under the organization root.

   Answer: A

   Explanation: The AWS Organizations guide states, "SCPs don't affect users or roles in the management account." The other choices remain member accounts, so their principals can be restricted by applicable SCPs.

   Reference: Service control policies (SCPs) — SCPs don't affect users or roles in the management account

10. 10After an SQS worker successfully processes a received message, what should it do to prevent the message from reappearing when visibility timeout expires?

    1. A. Subscribe the queue to an SNS topic.
    2. B. Increase the queue's default delay.
    3. C. Delete the message from the queue.
    4. D. Extend the queue retention period.

    Answer: C

    Explanation: AWS states, "The consumer (Component 2) deletes message A from the queue to prevent the message from being received and processed again when the visibility timeout expires." Successful processing must be followed by deletion; merely changing delay or retention does not acknowledge it.

    Reference: What is Amazon Simple Queue Service? — Message lifecycle