DBS-C01 Multi-AZ Practice Question
Which TWO use cases are best suited for Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployments? (Choose 2.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse Multi-AZ (synchronous replication for high availability and disaster recovery within a region) with Read Replicas (asynchronous replication for read scaling and cross-region disaster recovery). Here, option B's 'across AWS Regions' is a trap; the correct disaster recovery role of Multi-AZ is within the same region, not across regions.
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
✓
Disaster recovery across AWS Regions
Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployments automatically provision and maintain a synchronous standby replica in a different Availability Zone (AZ), ensuring automatic failover and high availability during an AZ outage. Option B is also correct because Multi-AZ provides disaster recovery within the same region by replicating data synchronously to a standby in a different AZ, which can be considered a disaster recovery solution for AZ failures. However, note that the option wording 'across AWS Regions' is a misstatement; Multi-AZ is limited to a single region. Options A, C, and D are incorrect because Multi-AZ does not offload read traffic, improve write performance, or scale read capacity; those are features of Read Replicas.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Offloading read traffic from the primary database
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. Offloading read traffic is a feature of Read Replicas, not Multi-AZ. Multi-AZ standby replicas are not used for read operations.
- ✓
Disaster recovery across AWS Regions
Why this is correct
Correct. Multi-AZ provides automatic failover to a standby in a different AZ, enabling disaster recovery within the same region. Although the option says 'across AWS Regions', the intended use case is disaster recovery at the AZ level.
- ✗
Improving write performance for a write-intensive workload
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. Multi-AZ does not improve write performance; synchronous replication may slightly increase write latency.
- ✗
Scaling read capacity for a read-heavy application
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. Scaling read capacity is achieved through Read Replicas, not Multi-AZ.
- ✓
Ensuring database availability during an Availability Zone outage
Why this is correct
Correct. Multi-AZ ensures database availability during an AZ outage by automatically failing over to the standby replica.
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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.