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Difficulty: HardIdentify design principles of the AWS Cloud

A multiplayer gaming startup is redesigning its matchmaking and live tournament leaderboard system. The system experiences high, unpredictable spikes in traffic during weekend tournaments, but remains mostly idle during weekdays. The company wants to redesign the system to align with the AWS Cloud design principles of 'loose coupling' and 'services, not servers' to minimize operational overhead and handle failures gracefully. Which of the following architectural decisions best implement these design principles? (Select TWO.)

  1. Buffer incoming matchmaking requests using Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) and process them asynchronously using AWS Lambda.Answer
  2. Store real-time tournament leaderboard data in Amazon DynamoDB and use DynamoDB Streams to automatically trigger downstream notification functions.Answer
  3. C
    Configure an Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling group with a high minimum capacity of virtual machines to guarantee immediate availability for all tournament spikes.
  4. D
    Host the matchmaking logic and database on a single, large memory-optimized Amazon EC2 instance to minimize inter-service communication latency.
  5. E
    Establish direct, synchronous API calls between the game client, matchmaking service, and tournament database to ensure real-time transaction consistency.

Answer

The correct choices are the option to buffer requests using Amazon SQS and process them using AWS Lambda, and the option to store data in Amazon DynamoDB and use DynamoDB Streams to trigger notifications.
The option to buffer matchmaking requests with Amazon SQS and process them with AWS Lambda aligns with 'loose coupling' by inserting a message queue between request submission and processing, and with 'services, not servers' by utilizing serverless computing. Similarly, using Amazon DynamoDB and DynamoDB Streams to trigger Lambda functions uses fully managed services ('services, not servers') and integrates them asynchronously ('loose coupling').

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the target design principles ('services, not servers' and 'loose coupling') and the operational goals (minimizing operational overhead, handling spikes, and graceful failure).
Recognized that the solution must use serverless managed services and asynchronous, event-driven components.
This establishes criteria to evaluate which architectures avoid managing virtual servers and reduce tight runtime dependencies.
2
Analyze each option to determine if it uses serverless managed services (services, not servers) and minimizes direct inter-component dependencies (loose coupling).
Identified that Amazon SQS, AWS Lambda, and Amazon DynamoDB are managed serverless offerings that can integrate asynchronously.
This helps filter out traditional, server-based, or tightly coupled monolithic architectures.
3
Verify that the selected options (asynchronous processing via Amazon SQS and AWS Lambda, and event-driven updates via Amazon DynamoDB Streams) implement these principles.
Confirmed both options decouple components and shift infrastructure management to AWS.
Ensures that the final selection directly addresses all constraints in the scenario.
4
Confirm that the distractors rely on self-managed EC2 servers, monolithic synchronous architectures, or over-provisioning, which violate the target cloud design principles.
Validated that options using fixed EC2 capacity, monolithic single-instance deployment, or synchronous APIs are anti-patterns.
Guarantees that the wrong options are incorrect for reasons aligned with the AWS Cloud design principles.

Key Concept

Loose coupling and services, not servers are fundamental AWS design principles. Loose coupling reduces inter-dependencies between components, preventing cascading failures and allowing independent scaling. Services, not servers helps customers focus on application logic rather than managing infrastructure.
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Identify design principles of the AWS Cloud

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