Compute Services | AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate MCQs
Prepare effectively for your AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate Exam with these targeted 20 scenario-based multiple-choice questions (MCQs) covering key AWS topics such as Amazon EC2, Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), Auto Scaling, AWS Lambda, and Elastic Beanstalk. Designed to reflect exam-level complexity, these questions help assess your grasp of concepts, services, and practical use cases.
1. Amazon EC2: Instance Types, Pricing Models, Key Pairs, and Instance Lifecycle
Q1.
A startup is running a critical application that requires consistent performance for a workload that will run 24/7. Which Amazon EC2 instance pricing model is most suitable for minimizing costs while ensuring reliable performance?
- A. Spot Instances
- B. On-Demand Instances
- C. Reserved Instances (Standard)
- D. Savings Plan Instances
- E. Dedicated Hosts
Q2.
You need to launch multiple EC2 instances with the same configuration in different AWS regions. What is the most efficient way to ensure the instances share the same key pair for SSH access?
- A. Reuse the same key pair across regions.
- B. Create a new key pair for each region.
- C. Export the private key and manually copy it to each region.
- D. Share the key pair via Amazon S3.
- E. Use EC2 Instance Connect instead of key pairs.
Q3.
Which EC2 instance type would you recommend for a memory-intensive application requiring high network throughput?
- A. T4g.micro
- B. M5.large
- C. C5n.xlarge
- D. R6g.2xlarge
- E. G5.12xlarge
Q4.
An EC2 instance has been stopped, and you need to change its instance type. Which lifecycle state allows this change?
- A. Running
- B. Stopped
- C. Pending
- D. Terminated
- E. Shutting-down
Q5.
A company needs flexibility to scale its EC2 instances hourly but at the lowest possible cost. Which combination of EC2 pricing models should it use?
- A. Reserved Instances and Spot Instances
- B. On-Demand Instances only
- C. Spot Instances only
- D. Savings Plan and Dedicated Hosts
- E. Reserved Instances and On-Demand
2. Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)
Q6.
Which ELB type is most appropriate for a microservices-based application that requires advanced routing based on the request URL path?
- A. Classic Load Balancer
- B. Application Load Balancer
- C. Network Load Balancer
- D. Gateway Load Balancer
- E. Cross-Region Load Balancer
Q7.
How does an Application Load Balancer improve fault tolerance?
- A. By automatically redirecting requests to healthy targets in a target group.
- B. By storing all traffic logs for auditing.
- C. By enabling cross-region routing.
- D. By distributing requests across regions.
- E. By encrypting traffic end-to-end.
Q8.
Which feature of the Gateway Load Balancer supports seamless integration with third-party security appliances?
- A. Layer 7 routing
- B. VPC Endpoint Service
- C. Weighted Target Groups
- D. Client IP Stickiness
- E. SSL Termination
Q9.
What is the maximum number of target groups you can associate with a single Application Load Balancer listener?
- A. 10
- B. 25
- C. 50
- D. 100
- E. Unlimited
Q10.
Your ELB needs to handle requests from millions of clients globally while maintaining high availability. Which ELB configuration ensures this?
- A. Application Load Balancer in a single AZ
- B. Gateway Load Balancer with caching
- C. Network Load Balancer with Cross-Zone Load Balancing enabled
- D. Multiple Classic Load Balancers with Sticky Sessions
- E. Application Load Balancer in multiple AZs
3. Auto Scaling
Q11.
Which scaling policy ensures that an Auto Scaling group maintains a minimum number of instances at all times?
- A. Target Tracking Policy
- B. Step Scaling Policy
- C. Predictive Scaling Policy
- D. Simple Scaling Policy
- E. Scheduled Scaling Policy
Q12.
Your application has periodic spikes in traffic. What Auto Scaling policy can proactively scale instances to handle the spike?
- A. Step Scaling Policy
- B. Target Tracking Policy
- C. Scheduled Scaling Policy
- D. Simple Scaling Policy
- E. Lifecycle Hook Scaling
Q13.
Which of the following options are prerequisites for creating an Auto Scaling group?
- A. AMI and instance type
- B. Load balancer and target groups
- C. Subnet and VPC
- D. Security group and IAM role
- E. All of the above
4. AWS Lambda
Q14.
A developer wants to ensure that their Lambda function has permissions to access an S3 bucket. What is the best way to grant these permissions?
- A. Create a user policy in the AWS Management Console.
- B. Attach an IAM role with the required permissions to the Lambda function.
- C. Embed the access keys in the Lambda function code.
- D. Use an inline policy in the Lambda console.
- E. Assign the bucket’s ACL to the Lambda function.
Q15.
Which of the following scenarios is an ideal use case for AWS Lambda?
- A. Long-running batch jobs requiring sustained processing.
- B. Building a real-time log processing pipeline.
- C. Hosting a database server.
- D. Rendering 3D models on GPU instances.
- E. Running a containerized web server.
Q16.
What is the maximum memory allocation for an AWS Lambda function?
- A. 512 MB
- B. 1 GB
- C. 10 GB
- D. 16 GB
- E. 64 GB
5. Elastic Beanstalk
Q17.
Which of the following can you configure in Elastic Beanstalk environments?
- A. Platform stack version
- B. Instance types
- C. Load balancer type
- D. Database connection
- E. All of the above
Q18.
Which Elastic Beanstalk feature allows seamless deployment of new versions of an application without downtime?
- A. Immutable updates
- B. Rolling updates
- C. Replacing environment versions
- D. In-place updates
- E. Blue/Green deployment
Q19.
You are using Elastic Beanstalk to deploy a scalable web application. What happens if the application exceeds the configured scaling limits?
- A. Requests are dropped.
- B. Elastic Beanstalk automatically increases the limits.
- C. The application crashes.
- D. Traffic is routed to a fallback service.
- E. Additional instances are launched automatically.
Q20.
Which Elastic Beanstalk configuration allows for the simplest application deployment?
- A. Single-instance environment
- B. Load-balanced environment
- C. Multi-container Docker environment
- D. Worker environment
- E. Clustered environment
Answer Key
| QNo | Answer (Option with Text) |
|---|---|
| Q1 | C. Reserved Instances (Standard) |
| Q2 | A. Reuse the same key pair across regions |
| Q3 | D. R6g.2xlarge |
| Q4 | B. Stopped |
| Q5 | A. Reserved Instances and Spot Instances |
| Q6 | B. Application Load Balancer |
| Q7 | A. By automatically redirecting requests to healthy targets |
| Q8 | B. VPC Endpoint Service |
| Q9 | C. 50 |
| Q10 | E. Application Load Balancer in multiple AZs |
| Q11 | A. Target Tracking Policy |
| Q12 | C. Scheduled Scaling Policy |
| Q13 | E. All of the above |
| Q14 | B. Attach an IAM role with the required permissions to the Lambda |
| Q15 | B. Building a real-time log processing pipeline |
| Q16 | D. 16 GB |
| Q17 | E. All of the above |
| Q18 | E. Blue/Green deployment |
| Q19 | A. Requests are dropped |
| Q20 | A. Single-instance environment |