DBS-C01 Workload-Specific Database Design Practice Question
Which THREE factors should be considered when choosing between Amazon RDS Multi-AZ and Amazon Aurora for high availability? (Choose 3)
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse RDS Multi-AZ's synchronous replication with Aurora's shared storage architecture, assuming both have similar failover times, but Aurora's failover is consistently faster due to its distributed storage layer.
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
✓
Aurora provides faster failover (typically under 30 seconds)
Aurora's distributed storage architecture enables failover in under 30 seconds typically, because the storage layer is shared across all instances in the cluster. When the primary instance fails, Aurora simply promotes one of the existing read replicas to primary, without needing to remap storage volumes. This is significantly faster than RDS Multi-AZ, which requires a DNS change and a synchronous block-level replication failover that can take 60-120 seconds.
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 provides faster failover (typically under 30 seconds)
Why this is correct
Aurora failover is faster than RDS Multi-AZ.
- ✗
RDS Multi-AZ provides automatic scaling of storage
Why it's wrong here
RDS Multi-AZ does not auto-scale storage; Aurora does.
- ✗
RDS Multi-AZ supports encryption at rest
Why it's wrong here
Both support encryption; this is not a differentiating factor.
- ✓
Aurora automatically scales storage up to 128 TB per instance
Why this is correct
Aurora storage auto-scales up to 128 TB.
- ✓
Aurora supports up to 15 read replicas, while RDS Multi-AZ supports only 1 standby
Why this is correct
Aurora offers more replicas for read scaling.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
One of 1,663 original DBS-C01 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
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.