Get Your CertSAA-C03PlayCompete
‹ All SAA-C03 questions

SAA-C03 Practice Question 10: Compute Savings Plans Spot Mix

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) · Test 1 · question 10 of 10

Compute Cost Optimizationhard

Finance has flagged a rising compute bill. The account runs three distinct workloads: a steady around-the-clock baseline of roughly 200 vCPUs of EC2 spread across two Regions and several instance families, an AWS Fargate API that must stay online continuously, and a nightly batch fleet that is fully checkpointed and tolerates interruption.

The architect may make a one-year commitment but must preserve the freedom to change EC2 instance families and Regions as the platform evolves. Which combination is most cost-effective?

Select one answer
Show answer and explanation

Answer:

  • B. A Compute Savings Plan sized to the baseline plus the Fargate API, and Spot Instances for the batch fleet

Compute Savings Plans are the most flexible commitment AWS offers: in exchange for a committed dollars-per-hour figure over one or three years they discount EC2 usage regardless of instance family, size, OS, tenancy, or Region, and the same commitment automatically applies to AWS Fargate and AWS Lambda usage. That maps one-to-one onto the constraints: two Regions, changing families, and a Fargate component all covered by a single plan. The interruptible batch fleet is the textbook Spot workload: it is checkpointed, so an interruption costs a restart rather than a failure, and it gets the deepest discount available without any commitment at all. Committing to a plan for a workload that only runs at night would waste coverage during the day.

Option A fails twice. Standard Reserved Instances are locked to an instance family and Region and cannot be exchanged, which directly contradicts the flexibility requirement, and Reserved Instances do not apply to Fargate usage at all. Leaving the interruptible batch fleet on On-Demand throws away the single largest saving available.

Option C fixes half of A: Convertible RIs can be exchanged for a different family, but they still do not cover Fargate, and sizing a commitment to include a fleet that runs only a few hours a night buys coverage that sits idle the rest of the day.

Option D picks the wrong Savings Plan type and misplaces Spot. EC2 Instance Savings Plans commit you to a specific instance family in a specific Region, the opposite of what is required, and, unlike Compute Savings Plans, they do not extend to Fargate or Lambda. Running a continuously available production API on Spot is also a poor fit, since Spot capacity can be reclaimed on two minutes' notice.

Reference: What are Savings Plans?

Practice Test 1 ›

Study guides for SAA-C03

AWS Developer Associate exam guide: DVA-C02 to DVA-C03AWS Developer Associate exam: DVA-C02 ends 30 November 2026 and DVA-C03 starts 1 December. What changes, which to sit, format, price and study plan.
AWS interview questions: scenarios, freshers to experiencedAWS interview questions on EC2, Lambda, S3, databases, VPC and IAM, by level, with four scenarios worked end to end and the facts old answers get wrong.
AWS Security Specialty: is it worth it, and what's testedAWS Security Specialty (SCS-C03): who it's worth it for, the six domains, new question types, price, and how it compares with CISSP.
SAA-C03 exam guide: what's on it and how to passSAA-C03 exam guide for 2026: the four domains, 65 questions in 130 minutes, price in USD and INR, the October 2026 guide update and a study plan.
AWS Service Control Policies Explained: SCPs and DenialsAWS service control policies explained: how SCPs cap permissions, why admins still get access denied, inheritance, deny vs allow lists and the exam traps.
Business Automation Examples: McDonald's to Step FunctionsBusiness automation examples from McDonald's, KFC, Ford and Toyota, the four moves they share, what to automate first, and AWS Step Functions.
How AI Is Changing Software Jobs: Where to PrepareHow AI is changing software jobs: what history shows, the evidence on junior developers, what Klarna learned, new AI roles and five domains to prepare for.
How AWS Certification Exams Work: Scoring and RenewalHow AWS certification exams work: levels, booking, question types, unscored questions, scaled scores, pass marks, validity and how recertification works.
How Netflix Uses AWS: Control Plane, CDN and ChaosHow Netflix uses AWS: the 2008 outage behind the move, control plane vs Open Connect, chaos engineering, multi-Region design and what it teaches for exams.
What Is Amazon RDS? Multi-AZ, Read Replicas and BackupsWhat is Amazon RDS? Engines, Multi-AZ, read replicas, backups, RDS Proxy, Aurora and pricing explained, with the traps that AWS exams set around each one.
What Is AWS Lambda? Triggers, Concurrency and Cold StartsWhat is AWS Lambda? How functions run, cold starts, triggers vs event source mappings, concurrency, layers, aliases, pricing and the exam traps.
What jobs can you get with AWS Cloud Practitioner?What jobs can you get with AWS Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02)? The roles it helps with, the ones it won't land on its own, and what to add next.
AWS CloudOps Engineer Associate (SOA-C03) exam guideAWS Certified CloudOps Engineer – Associate (SOA-C03) replaced SysOps Administrator. Format, cost, the five domains, what changed and how to prepare.
Which AWS certification should you get? 2026 roadmapWhich AWS certification to get first, by role and experience, with each exam's status in October 2026, what is changing, and prices in USD and INR.
What Is AWS Glue? Data Catalog, Crawlers and ETL JobsWhat is AWS Glue? The Data Catalog, crawlers, ETL jobs and DPUs, workflows, streaming, job bookmarks, Flex and Data Quality, plus the traps AWS exams set.
AWS Edge Locations and CloudFront, ExplainedHow AWS edge locations work: CloudFront POPs, regional edge caches, the request path, edge location vs Region, and the Global Accelerator exam trap.
What Is Amazon EC2? Instances, AMIs, EBS and Auto ScalingAmazon EC2 explained: instances, AMIs, instance types, security groups, EBS, Auto Scaling groups and pricing options, with the traps AWS exams set.
Amazon S3 storage classes and lifecycle rulesHow S3 storage classes, Intelligent-Tiering and lifecycle rules work, with the retrieval fees and minimum durations that AWS exam questions turn on.
AWS disaster recovery strategies, RTO and RPOBackup and restore, pilot light, warm standby and active/active on AWS, how RTO and RPO pick between them, and the services each strategy uses.
IAM users, roles and policies on AWSHow IAM users, roles, identity-based and resource-based policies, cross-account access, SCPs and permissions boundaries fit together for AWS exams.
SQS vs SNS vs EventBridge on AWSWhen to use an SQS queue, an SNS topic or an EventBridge bus, plus fan-out, FIFO ordering, visibility timeouts and dead-letter queues for AWS exams.
The AWS shared responsibility model explainedWhat AWS secures and what you secure on EC2, RDS, Lambda and S3, how the line moves with each service, and how Cloud Practitioner questions test it.
VPC endpoints vs NAT gateways on AWSWhen to use gateway endpoints, interface endpoints (PrivateLink) or a NAT gateway for private subnets, and the cost and security trade-offs exams test.