Amazon Web Services SAA-C03 - AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (SAA-C03)

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)

Memory Optimized Instances: These instances are designed to deliver fast performance for workloads that process large data sets in memory. They are ideal for high-performance databases like SAP and applications with high memory utilization.

High Memory Utilization: Both the SAP application and the SQL Server database have high memory demands as per the on-premises performance data. Memory optimized instances provide the necessary memory capacity and performance.

Instance Types:

For the SAP application, using a memory optimized instance ensures the application has sufficient memory to handle the high workload efficiently.

For the SQL Server database, memory optimized instances ensure optimal database performance with high memory throughput.

Operational Efficiency: Using the same instance family for both the application and the database simplifies management and ensures both components meet performance requirements.

S3 Intelligent-Tiering is designed for data with unknown or changing access patterns. It automatically moves objects between frequent and infrequent access tiers as needed, with no retrieval fees for accessing data in any tier, and no performance impact. Minimal management overhead is required because AWS manages all transitions automatically. This class is cost-optimized and meets all requirements listed.

AWS Documentation Extract:

"S3 Intelligent-Tiering is the only storage class that automatically moves data between frequent and infrequent access tiers when access patterns change, with no retrieval charges and no impact on performance. It is designed to optimize costs automatically when data access patterns are unpredictable."

(Source: Amazon S3 documentation, Intelligent-Tiering storage class)

Other options:

B: Storage class analysis only provides recommendations, not actual storage tiering.

C & D: S3 Standard-IA and S3 One Zone-IA both have retrieval fees and may impact retrieval time and data durability.

AWS Glue Crawler: AWS Glue is a fully managed ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) service that makes it easy to prepare and load data for analytics. A Glue crawler can automatically discover new data and schema in Amazon S3, making it easy to keep the data catalog up-to-date.

Crawling the Data:

Set up an AWS Glue crawler to scan the S3 bucket containing the clickstream data.

The crawler will automatically detect the schema and create/update the tables in the AWS Glue Data Catalog.

Amazon Athena:

Athena is an interactive query service that makes it easy to analyze data in Amazon S3 using standard SQL.

Once the data catalog is updated by the Glue crawler, use Athena to query the clickstream data directly in S3.

Operational Efficiency: This solution leverages fully managed services, reducing operational overhead. Glue crawlers automate data cataloging, and Athena provides a serverless, pay-per-query model for quick data analysis without the need to set up or manage infrastructure.

This solution addresses the scalability needs of the workload while preventing failed processing attempts due to resource constraints.

Amazon S3 event notificationscan be used to trigger a message to an SQS queue whenever a new video is uploaded.

The existing Auto Scaling group of EC2 instances can poll the SQS queue, ensuring that the EC2 instances only process videos when there is a job in the queue.

SQS decouplesthe video upload and processing steps, allowing the system to handle sudden spikes in video uploads without overloading EC2 instances.

The use ofAuto Scalingensures that the EC2 instances can scale in or out based on the demand, maintaining cost efficiency while avoiding processing failures due to insufficient resources.

AWS References:

S3 Event Notificationsdetails how to configure notifications for S3 events.

Amazon SQSis a fully managed message queuing service that decouples components of the system.

Auto Scaling EC2explains how to manage automatic scaling of EC2 instances based on demand.

Why the other options are incorrect:

A. AWS Lambda functions: While Lambda can handle some workloads, video processing is often resource-intensive and long-running, making EC2 a more suitable solution.

B. Using SNS with Lambda: Similar to A, Lambda is not ideal for large-scale video processing due to its time and memory limitations.

D. AWS Step Functions: While a valid orchestration solution, this introduces more complexity and overhead compared to the simpler SQS-based solution.

Option B (Amazon FSx for Lustre): FSx for Lustre is optimized for high-performance file systems required by HPC workloads, scaling to millions of IOPS and supporting parallelized data access.

Option E (Cluster Placement Group with Auto Scaling): A cluster placement group ensures low-latency communication between EC2 instances, critical for HPC workloads. Amazon EMR simplifies running large-scale analytics jobs.

Amazon FSx for Lustre Documentation,AWS Placement Groups Documentation

Why Option B is Correct:

HTTP Proxy Integration: Passes XML requests directly to the application, which already supports XML.

JSON Conversion: An AWS Lambda function converts JSON requests to XML and calls the application.

API Gateway: Acts as a front end to handle JSON requests and integrates seamlessly with Lambda for the transformation process.

Why Other Options Are Not Ideal:

Option A: Suggests using API Gateway mappings to convert JSON to XML. API Gateway mapping templates are limited in functionality and are not ideal for complex transformations.

Option C and D: Use HTTP custom integration unnecessarily, which adds complexity without additional benefits.

AWS References:

Amazon API Gateway Integration:AWS Documentation - API Gateway Integration

AWS Lambda:AWS Documentation - Lambda

Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployment provides automated failover and increased availability for MySQL databases. In case of infrastructure failure or power outage in one Availability Zone, RDS automatically fails over to a standby replica in another AZ, minimizing downtime. This is the AWS-recommended way to achieve high availability for relational databases.

AWS Documentation Extract:

"Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployments provide high availability, failover support, and data redundancy for database instances. In the event of infrastructure failure, Amazon RDS performs an automatic failover to the standby."

(Source: Amazon RDS documentation, High Availability)

A: An ALB does not increase availability for a single database instance.

B: EC2 instance recovery does not move the instance across Availability Zones.

D: Termination protection prevents accidental deletion, not availability issues.