AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate

To achieve the requirement of directing users to a backup static error page if the primary website is unavailable, a Route 53 active-passive failover configuration is ideal. This setup minimizes changes and infrastructure overhead by using health checks to determine the availability of the Application Load Balancer (ALB). When the ALB is found to be unhealthy, Route 53 can smoothly transition the traffic to a static error page hosted within an Amazon S3 bucket. This method ensures high availability and resilience with minimal changes to the existing infrastructure.

To achieve low latency and high throughput for high performance computing (HPC) workloads on Amazon EC2, you should use a cluster placement group in one Availability Zone. This configuration packs instances close together, which reduces latency and increases network performance, facilitating the frequent communication required between instances in such workloads.

To achieve a cost-effective and high-performance solution for a globally accessible web application involving large data transfers, using Amazon S3 with Transfer Acceleration is the best choice. S3 Transfer Acceleration leverages Amazon CloudFront's globally distributed edge locations to significantly speed up upload and download operations for objects up to several gigabytes in size. This not only reduces latency but also maximizes performance by routing data through optimized network paths, making it an ideal solution for applications with users distributed across different geographic regions.

The company needs to replace its Windows file server farm that uses Distributed File System Replication (DFSR) to keep data in sync. Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is specifically designed to provide fully managed, highly reliable file storage that is accessible over the industry-standard Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. It supports DFSR, making it the ideal service for this use case. By using Amazon FSx, the company can maintain the same synchronization functionality in the cloud as they had on-premises.

To integrate the two microservices efficiently, the better approach is to use Amazon SQS (Simple Queue Service). Microservice 1 can send data to an SQS queue, and Microservice 2 can process messages from this queue. This solution allows for decoupling of the services, ensuring that Microservice 2 can handle the messages at its own pace without being directly dependent on the processing time of Microservice 1. SQS also provides fault tolerance, scalability, and cost-effectiveness, perfect for systems where the processing times of different parts are not uniform.