SAA-C03 Exam Dumps : AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03)

Amazon Athena enables serverless SQL queries directly on S3 objects, eliminating the need to download or preprocess data. EMR adds operational overhead, and API Gateway/ElastiCache are not data lake query engines.

A. ElastiCache:Provides in-memory caching, not suitable for persistent, scalable databases.

B. DynamoDB Streams + Lambda:Manages replication manually, increasing latency and operational complexity.

C. Aurora Global Database:Provides high availability but does not support active-active configuration.

D. DynamoDB Global Tables:Provides active-active configuration and sub-second RPO.

The correct answer isDbecause the application peak hours occur at thesame time each day, and the performance issue happens specifically at thestart of peak hours. This indicates that the company knows in advance when additional capacity will be needed. Ascheduled scaling policyis the most appropriate solution because it allows the Auto Scaling group to increase capacitybeforedemand rises, ensuring that instances are already launched and available when users begin accessing the application.

Dynamic scaling based on CPU or memory reacts onlyafterutilization increases. Because launching EC2 instances takes time, reactive scaling can lead to delays and degraded user experience at the beginning of peak periods. That directly matches the problem described in the question, where performance is slow at the start but normalizes later once capacity catches up. Scheduled scaling solves this by making capacity available proactively.

Option A is incorrect because an Application Load Balancer distributes traffic among existing instances but does not add capacity ahead of predictable demand. Option B is incorrect because Auto Scaling does not natively scale on memory utilization unless a custom metric is configured, and even then it would still be reactive rather than proactive. Option C is also incorrect because CPU-based dynamic scaling reacts after demand increases and therefore may not prevent the startup lag during peak traffic.

AWS design guidance recommends usingscheduled scalingwhen traffic patterns are predictable and occur at known times. This approach improves application responsiveness and user experience by making sure enough EC2 capacity is available before the workload surge begins.