Amazon Aurora: High Availability and Read Scaling with Multi-AZ and Replicas
A company is deploying a new application on AWS that requires a highly available relational database with automatic failover and read scaling. The database size is 100 GB and the workload is balanced between reads and writes. Which THREE AWS services or features should be used?
Quick Answer
The answer is Amazon Aurora, which provides high availability and read scaling through its distributed cluster architecture. Aurora’s Multi-AZ deployment automatically replicates your 100 GB database across three Availability Zones, ensuring automatic failover with no data loss, while you can add up to 15 low-latency read replicas for read scaling without impacting write performance. On the AWS Certified Database Specialty DBS-C01 exam, this scenario tests your understanding of Aurora’s native separation of compute and storage, where the cluster volume handles replication transparently—a common trap is confusing RDS Proxy (connection pooling) or DAX (DynamoDB caching) with failover or read scaling features. Remember that Aurora’s storage is always Multi-AZ by design, so you don’t need a separate Multi-AZ option; think “Aurora = HA + replicas built in” to avoid picking extraneous services.
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse Amazon RDS Proxy with a high-availability or failover solution, but it only manages connections and does not replicate data or provide automatic failover.
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
✓
Multi-AZ deployment
Multi-AZ deployment (Option A) is correct because it provides automatic failover for Amazon RDS by provisioning a synchronous standby replica in a different Availability Zone. If the primary DB instance fails, Amazon RDS automatically fails over to the standby, ensuring high availability without manual intervention. This directly meets the requirement for automatic failover in a relational database scenario.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Multi-AZ deployment
Why this is correct
Aurora automatically replicates data across AZs, providing failover.
- ✗
DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX)
Why it's wrong here
DAX is for DynamoDB, not Aurora.
- ✓
Amazon Aurora Replicas
Why this is correct
Aurora Replicas provide read scaling and failover support.
- ✓
Amazon Aurora
Why this is correct
Aurora provides high availability and performance.
- ✗
Amazon RDS Proxy
Why it's wrong here
RDS Proxy is for connection pooling, not failover.
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Same concept, more angles
1 more way this is tested on DBS-C01
These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.
Variation 1. A company is deploying a new multi-AZ Aurora MySQL database. The application requires read-heavy workloads and low latency. Which configuration will best meet these requirements?
medium- A.Enable Multi-AZ and use the secondary for read traffic.
- B.Deploy a single instance with one read replica in the same AZ.
- ✓ C.Enable Aurora Auto Scaling with a target metric of average CPU utilization.
- D.Use an RDS Proxy in front of the database.
Why C: Aurora Auto Scaling dynamically adds reader instances based on the average CPU utilization metric, which directly addresses the read-heavy workload requirement by distributing read traffic across multiple replicas. This configuration ensures low latency by scaling out read capacity automatically as demand increases, without manual intervention.
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DBS-C01 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the DBS-C01 exam.