DBS-C01 Workload-Specific Database Design Practice Question
A company runs a critical Oracle database on Amazon RDS. They need to implement a disaster recovery strategy that provides the lowest possible recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) across AWS Regions. Which TWO actions should they take? (Choose two.)
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse Multi-AZ with cross-Region DR, or incorrectly assume Oracle RDS supports cross-Region read replicas like MySQL or PostgreSQL, but Oracle RDS does not offer that feature.
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
✓
Configure cross-Region automated backups to copy backups to another Region.
Cross-Region automated backups copy RDS snapshots and transaction logs to a secondary Region, enabling point-in-time recovery with an RPO of minutes and an RTO of hours (depending on snapshot restore time). Option B is correct because AWS DMS with ongoing replication (change data capture) can continuously replicate Oracle data to a standby instance in another Region, achieving an RPO of seconds and an RTO of minutes by failing over to the replicated instance.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Configure cross-Region automated backups to copy backups to another Region.
Why this is correct
Cross-Region automated backups provide an RPO of a few minutes and allow restore in the secondary Region.
- ✓
Configure an AWS DMS task to replicate data from the primary RDS Oracle instance to an RDS Oracle instance in another Region.
Why this is correct
DMS provides ongoing replication with low RPO.
- ✗
Enable Multi-AZ on the primary RDS instance.
Why it's wrong here
Multi-AZ provides high availability within a single AWS Region by synchronously replicating to a standby in a different Availability Zone, but it does not replicate data across AWS Regions, so it cannot achieve the cross-Region RPO and RTO required. It is tempting because it offers automatic failover for local outages, which would be the correct choice if the question demanded intra-Region fault tolerance rather than cross-Region disaster recovery.
- ✗
Create a cross-Region read replica of the Oracle DB instance.
Why it's wrong here
Cross-Region read replicas are not supported for Oracle RDS.
- ✗
Use Amazon Aurora Global Database to replicate data across Regions.
Why it's wrong here
Aurora Global Database is for Aurora, not Oracle.
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