Amazon Web Services SAA-C03 Exam With Confidence Using Practice Dumps

Amazon EC2 allows you to install and manage SQL Server directly on a Windows or Linux VM, giving you full access to the underlying operating system. This is required when you need to install custom agents, configure OS-level features, or have complete control over the environment.

Amazon RDS and Aurora are managed services and do not provide access to the underlying OS, nor does Redshift (which is a data warehouse, not SQL Server).

AWS Documentation Extract:

" If you require access to the underlying operating system or need to install custom software, use SQL Server on Amazon EC2. Amazon RDS is a managed service and does not provide OS-level access. "

(Source: AWS Database Migration documentation, SQL Server Deployment Options)

The key issue is repeated reads of identical data from an RDS MySQL database, which leads to unnecessary database load and degraded performance. The AWS-recommended solution for this pattern is to introduce an in-memory cache between the application and the database.

Amazon ElastiCache (Redis OSS) is purpose-built for caching frequently accessed data with microsecond-level latency. By caching identical query results, the backend EC2 instances can serve responses directly from memory instead of repeatedly querying the database. This significantly reduces read pressure on the RDS instance and improves overall application performance and scalability.

Option B is correct because Redis integrates cleanly with EC2-based applications and supports advanced caching patterns such as key expiration, eviction policies, and fine-grained control over cached objects. This approach also improves resilience during traffic spikes by offloading work from the database.

Option A is incorrect because SNS is a messaging service and does not cache or accelerate database queries. Option C is incorrect because DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) works only with DynamoDB tables, not Amazon RDS. Option D is designed for streaming data ingestion and analytics, not for optimizing synchronous database access.

Therefore, B is the correct solution because it addresses the root cause of the performance problem by caching repeated database reads, following AWS best practices for high-performing application architectures.

The correct answer is C because the company already uses Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP and requires a disaster recovery solution in a secondary Region that preserves access through the same protocols , specifically CIFS and NFS . The most appropriate solution is to deploy a second FSx for ONTAP file system in the secondary Region and use NetApp SnapMirror to replicate data between Regions. SnapMirror is built for ONTAP-based replication and is the native mechanism for efficient, storage-level disaster recovery.

This option provides the least operational overhead because it uses the capabilities already integrated into FSx for ONTAP rather than introducing another storage platform or custom replication tooling. It also preserves protocol compatibility, so applications in the recovery Region can continue to access data through CIFS and NFS without architectural changes.

Option A is incorrect because replicating data to Amazon S3 does not preserve native CIFS and NFS file shares. Option B can support recovery, but backups and restores are not the best fit for an active DR strategy where the secondary Region needs accessible replicated storage with the same protocols and lower recovery effort. Option D is incorrect because Amazon EFS does not provide CIFS/SMB support in the same way as FSx for ONTAP and would require a platform change.

AWS guidance for FSx for ONTAP disaster recovery favors using SnapMirror replication to another FSx for ONTAP deployment. This approach is protocol-compatible, efficient, and operationally simpler than building a custom DR workflow.