DOP-C02 Resilient Cloud Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a disaster recovery strategy for a critical application. They need a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 15 minutes and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 1 minute. Which AWS database service configuration meets these requirements?
⚠ Common exam trap
Common misconception: Any cross-region read replica (like RDS MySQL or PostgreSQL) can achieve sub-minute RPO and RTO. In reality, manual promotion steps and asynchronous replication lag make them unsuitable for strict 15-minute RTO and 1-minute RPO requirements. Aurora Global Database's storage-level replication achieves RPO of 1 second and RTO under 1 minute, meeting the requirements.
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 Global Database
Aurora Global Database provides a fully managed cross-region disaster recovery solution with typical RPO of 1 second and RTO of 1 minute for regional failover, which meets the required RTO of 15 minutes and RPO of 1 minute. It uses storage-level replication that is asynchronous but very low-latency, and failover can be promoted to the secondary region in under a minute.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
RDS MySQL with Multi-AZ and cross-region read replica
Why it's wrong here
This option is incorrect for DR because Multi-AZ only protects against AZ failures within a single region and does not replicate data across regions. The cross-region read replica uses asynchronous MySQL replication, so the RPO can be minutes and you must manually promote the replica to master, making the RTO unpredictable and potentially lengthy.
- ✗
DynamoDB global tables
Why it's wrong here
DynamoDB global tables replicate data across regions with sub-second latency, giving a very low RPO, but this option does not provide automatic regional failover for the application endpoint. You must manually reroute traffic or update your client configuration, and because cross-region replication and DNS propagation can take time, the RTO may exceed 15 minutes, failing a strict DR target.
- ✓
Aurora Global Database
Why this is correct
Aurora Global Database is the correct DR choice because it uses dedicated storage-level replication across regions with a typical RPO of sub-second and an RTO of under 1 minute when you promote a secondary region. The primary and secondary remain fully readable during normal operation, and promotion is a single API call with automatic DNS update, giving the best RTO/RPO among the options.
- ✗
RDS PostgreSQL with cross-region read replica
Why it's wrong here
RDS PostgreSQL cross-region read replicas replicate asynchronously from the primary, so the replication lag can cause an RPO greater than 1 minute, which is too high for strict DR requirements. Additionally, promoting the read replica to become the new primary is a manual process and can take several minutes or more, making the RTO unacceptable compared to Aurora's automated failover.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
Go deeper
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DOP-C02 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 DOP-C02 exam.