Module 2: Designing a serverless data analytics solution on AWS

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In this post, I provide complete, accurate, and detailed explanations for the answers to Module 2: Designing a serverless data analytics solution on AWS of  Course 2: Architecting Solutions on AWS

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Week 2 Assessment

Graded Assignment

1. A solutions architect is designing an architecture that can provide HTML pages to customers. They want a serverless solution that can host content over the internet and serve a static website with minimal effort. Which AWS service should the solutions architect choose to meet these requirements?

  • Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) ✅
  • Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)
  • Amazon DynamoDB
  • Amazon Kinesis

Explanation:

  • Amazon S3 is the best serverless option for hosting static websites (HTML, CSS, JS).
  • It can serve files over the internet with minimal configuration.
  • EC2 requires managing servers, which goes against the “serverless” requirement.
  • DynamoDB and Kinesis are not used for hosting websites or static content.

2. A solutions architect is designing a solution that needs real-time data ingestion. They are considering either Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose or Amazon Kinesis Data Streams for this solution. Which service should the solutions architect choose to meet the requirement for real-time data ingestion, and why? (Remember that lower data latency means a lower roundtrip time from when data is ingested and available.)

  • Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose, because it has lower latency when compared to Amazon Kinesis Data Streams
  • Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose, because it has higher latency when compared to Amazon Kinesis Data Streams
  • Amazon Kinesis Data Streams, because it has lower latency when compared to Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose ✅
  • Amazon Kinesis Data Streams, because it has higher latency when compared to Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose

Explanation:

  • Kinesis Data Streams provides real-time data ingestion with millisecond latency.
  • Kinesis Data Firehose is designed for batch delivery and has higher latency because it buffers data before delivery.
  • So for real-time use cases with low latency, Kinesis Data Streams is the right choice.

3. True or False: When creating data lakes for analytics on AWS, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) would be a preferred service. Users can use data in an S3 bucket with an independent data-processing or visualization layer, such as Amazon QuickSight, Amazon Athena, or Amazon EMR.

  • True ✅
  • False

Explanation:

  • Amazon S3 is commonly used as the storage layer for data lakes.
  • Services like Amazon Athena, Amazon QuickSight, and Amazon EMR can directly access and process data stored in S3.
  • This decouples storage and processing, offering a flexible analytics architecture.

4. A solutions architect is designing a serverless solution that can do Structured Query Language (SQL) queries over multiple objects that are stored in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). All the objects share the same data structure (schema) and are in JSON. Which service would make it easier to query the data, in addition to providing serverless capabilities?

  • Amazon Athena ✅
  • AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS)
  • Amazon S3 Select
  • AWS Data Exchange

Explanation:

  • Amazon Athena allows you to run SQL queries directly on data stored in S3, including JSON files, without provisioning any servers.
  • It’s a serverless service designed for querying large datasets.
  • S3 Select can query a single object, not across multiple files.
  • AWS DMS is for migrating databases, not querying.
  • AWS Data Exchange is for subscribing to third-party data sets.

5. True or False: When architecting a solution that can handle high demand and usage spikes, Amazon CloudFront should be used in front of an Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket. CloudFront can cache data that gets delivered to customers, and it lets customers use custom domain names. In addition, CloudFront can serve custom SSL certificates that are issued by Amazon Certificate Manager (at no additional cost) and it can provide distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection that is powered by AWS WAF and AWS Shield.

  • True ✅
  • False

Explanation:

  • Amazon CloudFront is a global content delivery network (CDN) that caches content at edge locations for faster access.
  • It integrates with S3 to serve static files.
  • Supports custom domains and SSL certificates via AWS Certificate Manager (ACM).
  • Provides DDoS protection via AWS Shield and can work with AWS WAF for application-layer protection.

Related contents:

Module 1: Designing a serverless web backend on AWS
Module 3: Designing a hybrid solution for container based workloads on AWS
Module 4: Designing a solution following account governance and management best practices

You might also like:

Course 1: AWS Cloud Technical Essentials
Course 3: Building Data Lakes on AWS
Course 4: Exam Prep: AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate

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