The answer is Amazon Route 53 with health checks and failover policy, along with Aurora Replicas in the same Region and an Aurora Global Database. Aurora Replicas are critical for high availability within a single Region because they share the same underlying storage volume as the primary instance, enabling automatic failover in under 30 seconds without data rehydration. For cross-Region disaster recovery, an Aurora Global Database provides a secondary cluster in a different AWS Region with low-latency replication, while Route 53’s health checks and failover policy route traffic away from the primary Region during an outage. On the AWS Certified Database Specialty exam, this question tests your understanding of how these three components work together to achieve both intra-Region HA and inter-Region DR, a common scenario for global applications. A common trap is confusing read replicas with cross-Region replicas—remember that standard read replicas do not support cross-Region failover. Memory tip: “Local replicas for speed, global for need, Route 53 to lead.”
DBS-C01 Deployment and Migration Practice Question
This DBS-C01 practice question tests your understanding of deployment and migration. Match the stated requirement to the specific cloud service, access model, or configuration option — many options are valid in isolation but not for this scenario. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A company is deploying an Amazon Aurora MySQL database with read replicas. They need to ensure high availability and disaster recovery across AWS Regions. Which THREE components should be included?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Aurora Replicas in the same Region
Aurora Replicas in the same Region provide read scaling and automatic failover within an AWS Region. They share the same underlying storage volume as the primary instance, so failover is fast (typically under 30 seconds) and does not require data rehydration. This is a core component for high availability within a single Region.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
✓
Aurora Replicas in the same Region
Why this is correct
Aurora Replicas provide high availability within the region.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✓
Aurora Global Database
Why this is correct
Global Database enables cross-region replication for disaster recovery.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Auto Scaling groups
Why it's wrong here
Auto Scaling is for EC2 instances, not database.
✓
Amazon Route 53 with health checks and failover policy
Why this is correct
Route 53 can redirect traffic in case of region failure.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Amazon CloudFront
Why it's wrong here
CloudFront is a CDN, not for database disaster recovery.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse Auto Scaling groups (which scale compute resources) with database replication or failover mechanisms, or they mistakenly think CloudFront can serve as a database-level disaster recovery solution when it only caches content at the edge.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Aurora Global Database uses dedicated storage-level replication (asynchronous) to keep one or more secondary Regions up to date with sub-second latency, enabling cross-Region disaster recovery with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of typically less than 1 second and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of about 1 minute. Route 53 health checks monitor the Aurora endpoints and, combined with a failover routing policy, can automatically redirect traffic to a healthy replica or the secondary Region during a failure, ensuring client-side failover without manual intervention.
KKey Concepts to Remember
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
→Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
→Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
A media company stores terabytes of video archives that are accessed once a year for audit purposes. Moving these objects to a cold storage tier (Azure Archive, S3 Glacier, or Google Nearline) costs a fraction of hot storage. Questions like this test whether you understand storage tiers, access frequency tradeoffs, and retrieval latency requirements.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Deployment and Migration — This question tests Deployment and Migration — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Aurora Replicas in the same Region — Aurora Replicas in the same Region provide read scaling and automatic failover within an AWS Region. They share the same underlying storage volume as the primary instance, so failover is fast (typically under 30 seconds) and does not require data rehydration. This is a core component for high availability within a single Region.
What should I do if I get this DBS-C01 question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
About these practice questions
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Question Discussion
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