DBS-C01 Workload-Specific Database Design Practice Question
A financial services company runs a critical application on Amazon RDS for MySQL that processes transactions. The database must maintain ACID compliance and support point-in-time recovery (PITR) with a recovery point objective (RPO) of 5 seconds and recovery time objective (RTO) of 1 minute. The current setup uses a single db.r5.large instance with automated backups enabled (retention period 7 days) and Multi-AZ deployment. During a recent failover test, the failover took 2 minutes, exceeding the RTO. What should the database specialist recommend to meet the RTO 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
✓
Migrate to a Multi-AZ DB Cluster deployment for RDS for MySQL.
Amazon RDS Multi-AZ DB Cluster for MySQL provides fast failover (typically under 1 minute) because it uses synchronous replication to two standby instances in different Availability Zones, ensuring automatic failover meets the 1-minute RTO. Option A (Remove Multi-AZ and rely on automated backups) would require restoring from backup, which takes much longer than 1 minute. Option C (Configure a cross-Region read replica and promote it during failure) involves manual promotion and is not automatic, so it cannot guarantee the RTO. Option D (Increase the instance size to db.r5.xlarge) does not affect failover speed, as failover time is determined by the Multi-AZ configuration, not instance size.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Remove Multi-AZ and rely on automated backups for recovery.
Why it's wrong here
Backups have higher RTO.
- ✓
Migrate to a Multi-AZ DB Cluster deployment for RDS for MySQL.
Why this is correct
Multi-AZ DB Cluster provides faster failover (<1 minute).
- ✗
Configure a cross-Region read replica and promote it during a failure.
Why it's wrong here
Promotion is manual and may exceed RTO.
- ✗
Increase the instance size to db.r5.xlarge to improve failover speed.
Why it's wrong here
Instance size does not affect failover time.
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