DEA-C01 Data Store Management Practice Question
A company runs a critical application on Amazon RDS for MySQL that requires a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 5 minutes and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 1 hour. The database is 500 GB. What is the MOST cost-effective disaster recovery solution that meets these requirements?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse Multi-AZ (synchronous, same-region, automatic failover) with cross-region read replicas (asynchronous, manual promotion), assuming both provide similar DR capabilities, but Multi-AZ is the only option that meets both RPO and RTO cost-effectively for a single-region requirement.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Use a Multi-AZ deployment with automatic failover.
Multi-AZ RDS for MySQL provides synchronous standby replication to a second Availability Zone, enabling automatic failover with minimal data loss (typically zero) and RTO under 1 hour. This meets the RPO of 5 minutes and RTO of 1 hour without manual intervention, and is more cost-effective than a cross-region replica for a 500 GB database.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Deploy the database in a single Availability Zone and perform manual point-in-time restores.
Why it's wrong here
Single-AZ has no automatic failover; manual restore would exceed RTO.
- ✗
Take automated snapshots daily and store them in Amazon S3.
Why it's wrong here
Daily snapshots have an RPO of up to 24 hours, exceeding the 5-minute requirement.
- ✓
Use a Multi-AZ deployment with automatic failover.
Why this is correct
Multi-AZ provides synchronous replication to a standby in another AZ, achieving RPO of seconds and RTO of minutes.
- ✗
Create a cross-region read replica and promote it during a disaster.
Why it's wrong here
Promoting a read replica can take time and may not meet the 1-hour RTO; also, cross-region replication may have lag.
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