DOP-C02 Resilient Cloud Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a disaster recovery strategy for a critical application that requires a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 15 minutes and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 1 hour. The application runs on EC2 with data stored in Amazon RDS Multi-AZ. Which approach meets these requirements?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse Multi-AZ (high availability within a Region) with cross-Region disaster recovery, assuming Multi-AZ alone provides DR, but it does not protect against Region-wide outages.
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
✓
Use a pilot light strategy with RDS cross-Region read replicas and automated backups
A pilot light strategy with RDS cross-Region read replicas and automated backups meets the RTO of 15 minutes and RPO of 1 hour. The cross-Region read replica provides near-synchronous replication with an RPO typically under 5 seconds, and automated backups enable point-in-time recovery within the 1-hour RPO. The pilot light approach allows rapid promotion of the replica to a primary instance, achieving the 15-minute RTO by keeping minimal core services running in the DR Region.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Use a pilot light strategy with RDS cross-Region read replicas and automated backups
Why this is correct
A pilot light strategy keeps a minimal core, such as the RDS instance, running in the DR Region via a cross-Region read replica while other services remain off. The read replica provides continuous asynchronous replication, so a promotion on failover can complete in roughly 15 minutes, and automated backups in the DR Region give point-in-time restore support. Since the database is already warm and data is being copied, the worst-case data loss stays within the 1-hour RPO.
- ✗
Use backup and restore with daily snapshots to another Region
Why it's wrong here
Backup and restore with daily snapshots to another Region only permits recovery to the most recent snapshot, which can be up to 24 hours old. This makes the worst-case RPO approximately 24 hours, far exceeding the required 1-hour RPO. Additionally, restoring from a snapshot requires provisioning new storage and importing data, which is unlikely to complete within the 15-minute RTO, making this option unsuitable.
- ✗
Use a warm standby with a scaled-down production environment in another Region
Why it's wrong here
A warm standby runs a scaled-down copy of the full production stack in another Region, so the infrastructure is already provisioned and can be promoted quickly to meet the RTO. However, unless that scaled-down environment's databases are actively replicating from the primary Region, the data held in the standby can be stale by more than an hour. Without continuous replication or frequent transaction-log shipping, failover risks losing more than 1 hour of writes, violating the RPO even though the RTO is satisfied.
- ✗
Use a Multi-AZ deployment in the same Region for DR
Why it's wrong here
Multi-AZ deployment replicates data synchronously to a standby instance in a different Availability Zone within the same Region, which protects against an AZ-wide failure or a database instance crash. It does nothing for a Region-wide outage, such as a natural disaster or regional network disruption, because every Availability Zone is still contained within that same Region. Since the DR requirement demands recovery in another Region, Multi-AZ alone cannot fulfill the strategy.
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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.