Architecting on AWS Certification Blueprint Reading & Symbols 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: In an AWS architecture blueprint, a box with the label 'VPC Peering' connecting two VPC boundaries represents what connectivity type?
- An encrypted VPN tunnel between on-premises and AWS
- A direct private network connection between two VPCs enabling resource communication (Correct answer)
- A public internet route between two VPCs
- An AWS Transit Gateway hub connecting multiple VPCs
Correct answer: A direct private network connection between two VPCs enabling resource communication
VPC Peering creates a direct private connection between two VPCs, allowing resources to communicate as if on the same network.
Question 2: When an AWS diagram shows a Transit Gateway icon at the center with multiple VPCs and on-premises connections radiating outward, this represents what topology?
- A full-mesh VPC peering configuration
- A hub-and-spoke network topology centralizing connectivity through Transit Gateway (Correct answer)
- An AWS Direct Connect redundant circuit layout
- A multi-region active-active failover design
Correct answer: A hub-and-spoke network topology centralizing connectivity through Transit Gateway
Transit Gateway acts as a hub, creating a hub-and-spoke topology where all VPCs and on-premises networks connect through a central gateway.
Question 3: In AWS architecture diagrams, a yellow lightning bolt or queue icon between two services most commonly represents which AWS service?
- Amazon SNS for push notifications
- Amazon SQS for decoupled message queuing (Correct answer)
- Amazon Kinesis for real-time streaming
- AWS EventBridge for event-driven routing
Correct answer: Amazon SQS for decoupled message queuing
SQS is depicted with a queue icon representing its FIFO or standard message queue that decouples producers from consumers.
Question 4: What does a stack of identical server icons in an AWS architecture diagram most likely represent?
- Multiple EC2 instance types in a Spot Fleet
- A horizontally scaled fleet of instances or replicated service tier (Correct answer)
- An EC2 Dedicated Host with multiple logical instances
- Multiple read replicas of a single RDS database
Correct answer: A horizontally scaled fleet of instances or replicated service tier
Stacked server icons represent horizontal scaling—multiple identical instances of the same service running in parallel to handle load.
Question 5: In an AWS reference architecture diagram, a dotted boundary surrounding resources labeled 'Region: us-east-1' indicates what architectural scope?
- A single Availability Zone within a region
- All resources within the diagram are deployed to that specific AWS geographic region (Correct answer)
- An AWS Local Zone extension for low-latency workloads
- An AWS Outposts on-premises deployment
Correct answer: All resources within the diagram are deployed to that specific AWS geographic region
A region boundary box encloses all resources deployed within that AWS geographic region, such as us-east-1 (N. Virginia).
Question 6: When an AWS architecture diagram shows an arrow from EC2 to DynamoDB labeled 'IAM Role', what does this arrow represent?
- A VPC endpoint connecting EC2 to DynamoDB privately
- Permissions granted to the EC2 instance to access DynamoDB via an attached IAM role (Correct answer)
- A DynamoDB stream triggering EC2 processing
- A direct database connection string stored in EC2
Correct answer: Permissions granted to the EC2 instance to access DynamoDB via an attached IAM role
An IAM Role arrow indicates that the EC2 instance has an attached IAM role granting it specific permissions to call the DynamoDB API.
Question 7: In an AWS architecture diagram, what does a diagonal arrow labeled 'Failover' between two RDS instances in different AZs represent?
- A read replica promoting to master under normal load
- Automatic database failover to a standby instance in another AZ during a primary failure (Correct answer)
- Cross-region replication for disaster recovery
- A manual snapshot restore procedure
Correct answer: Automatic database failover to a standby instance in another AZ during a primary failure
RDS Multi-AZ automatically fails over to a synchronous standby replica in another AZ when the primary instance experiences an outage.
Architecting on AWS Certification Blueprint Reading & Symbols 5
In an AWS architecture blueprint, a box with the label 'VPC Peering' connecting two VPC boundaries represents what connectivity type?