Amazon Web Services Updated SAP-C02 Exam Questions and Answers by shiloh

Kinesis Data Streams is a real-time streaming service and provide near-real-time analytics. Also the question " Deliver results of processing to a data warehouse " and this option has redshift cluster which is a powerful data warehousing solution that can handle large-scale analytics workloads.

The company’s goal is to modernize the application while minimizing operational overhead. The current architecture relies heavily on self-managed EC2 instances for web serving, APIs, search, and relational data storage. This increases operational burden related to patching, scaling, availability, and troubleshooting.

Option B replaces self-managed components with fully managed AWS services that are purpose-built for each workload type. Hosting the static web application on Amazon S3 with Amazon CloudFront removes the need to manage web servers such as NGINX and provides global content delivery with built-in scalability and high availability. Migrating the search data to Amazon OpenSearch Service eliminates the need to manage an EC2-based OpenSearch node, providing a managed search service with built-in scaling, patching, and monitoring. Migrating PostgreSQL to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL removes the operational overhead of managing database instances on EC2 and provides managed backups, high availability, and performance optimizations. Running APIs on AWS App Runner further reduces operational effort by abstracting infrastructure management, scaling, and deployment, allowing the team to focus on application code.

Option A still requires running and operating containerized databases and search engines, which is not recommended and does not significantly reduce operational overhead compared to EC2-based deployments. Databases and OpenSearch are better consumed as managed services rather than as containers.

Option C introduces Amazon EKS, which adds significant operational complexity. Even with managed node groups, Kubernetes requires cluster management, networking configuration, upgrades, and ongoing operational expertise. This contradicts the requirement for the least operational overhead.

Option D attempts to run databases and OpenSearch on AWS App Runner. App Runner is designed for stateless web services and APIs, not for stateful services such as databases or search engines. This architecture is not aligned with AWS best practices and would introduce reliability and operational challenges.

Therefore, using managed services such as Amazon CloudFront, Amazon S3, Amazon OpenSearch Service, Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, and AWS App Runner provides the most modern architecture with the least operational overhead.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation:

Why C is the best answer

This question requires all of the following:

Bidirectional access between two separate AWS Organizations

Access to S3 buckets across accounts and organizational boundaries

Encryption at rest

Logging of all S3 bucket access

Buckets exist in different Regions

Option C is the best match because S3 Access Points are purpose-built to simplify and scale access management for shared S3 datasets. For cross-account or multi-team sharing scenarios, S3 Access Points let you define dedicated access paths and policies instead of overloading a single bucket policy. For encryption at rest, customer managed AWS KMS keys are the strongest fit when cross-account access must be explicitly controlled. For logging bucket-level object access, AWS CloudTrail is the correct service because S3 data events record object-level API activity such as GetObject and PutObject.

Why the other options are not correct

A. S3 Access Grants is not the best fit here

S3 Access Grants is designed primarily to grant S3 access to identities mapped from identity sources and simplify data access at scale. It is not the standard primary design choice for bidirectional bucket sharing between two separate organizations. The exam-focused architectural pattern for controlled cross-account S3 sharing is S3 Access Points plus policies, combined with KMS permissions and CloudTrail data events. Even though SSE-KMS and CloudTrail data events are good parts of the design, the access mechanism in A is not the best answer.

B. VPC networking services do not solve the main requirement

VPC peering, PrivateLink, and endpoint access controls are network connectivity controls. Amazon S3 is not shared between organizations by building VPC peering between their VPCs. Also, VPC Flow Logs record network flow metadata, not S3 object access. That means B fails the logging requirement and uses the wrong control plane for the access-sharing requirement.

D. Replication and SCPs do not provide bidirectional shared access

S3 Cross-Region Replication copies objects; it does not establish bidirectional shared access for both organizations to each other’s buckets. Service Control Policies also do not work the way this option describes. SCPs are guardrails within an AWS Organization; they are not shared between separate organizations to grant object access. In addition, S3 server access logging is not the best answer when the requirement is to collect logs of all S3 bucket access in an auditable way for object-level API actions. CloudTrail data events are the stronger and more exam-aligned choice for logging object access activity.

Key technical reasoning

Cross-account / cross-organization S3 access:

S3 Access Points are commonly used to provide distinct permissions and simplified policy management for different consumers of the same bucket. This is especially useful in multi-account environments.

Encryption at rest:

When access spans accounts or organizations, customer managed KMS keys are preferred because key policies and grants can explicitly authorize external principals. This gives finer control than SSE-S3 when cross-account governance matters.

Logging:

For S3 object-level operations, CloudTrail data events are the standard answer in AWS architecture questions. They record API activity such as GetObject, PutObject, and DeleteObject. This is more appropriate than VPC Flow Logs or relying only on S3 server access logging.

Regional aspect:

The fact that buckets are in us-east-1 and us-west-1 does not prevent cross-account access. S3 access control, KMS permissions, and CloudTrail can be configured in the relevant Regions.

Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) is a fully managed pub/sub messaging service that enables users to send messages to multiple subscribers1. Users can sendevent details to an Amazon SNS topic and configure an AWS Lambda function as a subscriber to the SNS topic to process the events. Lambda is a serverless compute service that runs code in response to events and automatically manages the underlying compute resources2. Users can add an on-failure destination to the function and set an Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) queue as the target. Amazon SQS is a fully managed message queuing service that enables users to decouple and scale microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications3. This way, if a processing error occurs, the event will move into the separate queue for review.

Option B is incorrect because publishing events to an Amazon SQS queue and creating an Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling group will not have the ability to scale in and out based on the number of events that the solution receives. Amazon EC2 is a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. Auto Scaling is a feature that helps users maintain application availability and allows them to scale their EC2 capacity up or down automatically according to conditions they define. However, for this use case, using SQS and EC2 will not take advantage of the serverless capabilities of Lambda and SNS.

Option C is incorrect because writing events to an Amazon DynamoDB table and configuring a DynamoDB stream for the table will not have the ability to move events into a separate queue for review if a processing error occurs. Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed key-value and document database that delivers single-digit millisecond performance at any scale. DynamoDB Streams is a feature that captures data modification events in DynamoDB tables. Users can configure the stream to invoke a Lambda function, but they cannot configure an on-failure destination for the function.

Option D is incorrect because publishing events to an Amazon EventBridge event bus and setting an Application Load Balancer (ALB) as the event bus target will not have the ability to move events into a separate queue for review if a processing error occurs. Amazon EventBridge is a serverless event bus service that makes it easy to connect applications with data from a variety of sources. An ALB is a load balancer that distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets, such as EC2 instances, containers, IP addresses, Lambda functions, and virtual appliances. Users can configure EventBridge to retry events, but they cannot configure an on-failure destination for the ALB.