AWS SAA-C03 Question Types Explained

Why Understanding Question Types Matters

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) exam is not just a memory test. Most questions are short design scenarios: a customer has a problem, and you must pick the most appropriate AWS solution under constraints such as cost, availability and security. If you understand the main question patterns, you can scan faster and avoid being distracted by irrelevant details.

In this article we will break down the typical question types, show you what they are really testing and suggest concrete strategies for each one.

1. Short Design Scenarios (Single Best Answer)

The most common format is a short paragraph followed by four options. These questions often include keywords such as “highly available”, “cost-optimized” or “simplest”. You are expected to recognize which AWS building blocks match the requirement.

Typical decisions include:

• Choosing between ALB, NLB, Gateway Load Balancer or Route 53.
• Selecting the right storage class: S3 Standard vs Infrequent Access vs Glacier.
• Deciding between RDS, DynamoDB, Aurora or self-managed databases on EC2.

Strategy: underline or mentally mark the constraints: “global users” → think about CloudFront and Route 53; “millisecond latency at any scale” → think about DynamoDB; “no operations team” → favor managed services over EC2.

2. Multi-Select Scenario Questions

Some questions ask you to select two or three answers. These are often about combining services into a complete design: for example, using SQS to decouple components while S3 stores incoming objects and Lambda processes them.

The trap is that many options are partially correct. The exam wants the combination that satisfies all requirements. If the scenario mentions “must be encrypted at rest and in transit, with minimum operational overhead”, a self-managed solution on EC2 might be technically possible but is rarely the best choice compared to fully managed, encrypted services.

3. Diagram-Based and VPC Networking Questions

VPC diagrams test whether you can read network layouts quickly: public vs private subnets, NAT gateways, route tables and connectivity to on-prem environments. Typical questions might be:

• Why can an EC2 instance not reach the Internet?
• Which route must be added to connect to a new on-prem CIDR?
• Where should a new security control be placed in the architecture?

Strategy: before looking at the options, trace the data path in your mind. Start from the client and walk through each component: DNS → load balancer → target group → instance → database. Look for missing routes, broken security groups or mis-placed NAT gateways.

4. Troubleshooting and Cost-Optimization Cases

Another frequent pattern is a “something went wrong” question: a workload is too expensive, too slow or occasionally fails. You must find a minimal, targeted fix that respects constraints.

Examples:

• A data lake built on S3 with occasional query performance issues in Athena.
• An RDS instance hitting storage or IOPS limits during monthly reporting.
• A global application suffering high latency from a single-region design.

Strategy: identify the real bottleneck: compute, storage, network or design pattern. Then pick the option that addresses that bottleneck directly without over-engineering the solution.

5. How to Train with Practice Exams and Question Banks

Simply doing hundreds of questions is not enough. You need a feedback loop:

• After each practice set, group your errors by topic (e.g. VPC, databases, serverless).
• Revisit the official documentation or whitepapers for your weakest areas.
• Rewrite tricky questions in your own words to clarify what they were actually asking.

Use timed blocks—30 or 40 questions at a time—to simulate exam pressure, then switch to “slow mode” review where understanding is more important than speed.

Article Details

• Level: AWS SAA-C03
• Topic: Exam Strategy & Question Types
• Audience: Cloud architects & developers

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