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Message Retention Period

5 minutes 5 Questions

The message retention period is the amount of time that Amazon SQS will store a message when it's placed in a queue. It has a default duration of 4 days but can be configured to be anywhere between 1 minute and 14 days. If a message is not read and deleted within the set retention period, it will b…

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AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Message Retention Period Example Questions

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Question 1

A company wants to archive messages from an SQS queue for 30 days for audit purposes. What should be the message retention period?

Correct Answer: 30 days

A 30 days message retention period will ensure that the messages are retained in the SQS queue for the required duration before being removed. If the period is less than 30 days, messages will be removed prematurely; if it's higher, unnecessary storage costs may be incurred.

Question 2

Your application sends messages to an SQS queue, and you must ensure no messages are lost during peak hours of use. If messages are processed every 20 minutes, what message retention period should be set?

Correct Answer: At least 20 minutes

To ensure no messages are lost during peak hours, the message retention period should be at least as long as the processing time, in this case at least 20 minutes. A shorter period would result in messages being removed before they have been processed.

Question 3

You have an application which downloads and processes files from an S3 bucket, and the processing times vary widely. The maximum of time you can afford to lose messages is 10 days. What message retention period should be set on the SQS queue?

Correct Answer: 10 days

To meet the maximum timeframe for losing messages, a message retention period of 10 days should be set. If the period is shorter, messages may be deleted before they can be processed; if it's longer, it might exceed the maximum acceptable time for losing messages.

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