DOP-C02 Resilient Cloud Solutions Practice Question
A company's DevOps team is designing a disaster recovery plan for a critical application. The application runs on EC2 instances with an RDS MySQL database. The Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is 15 minutes, and the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is 1 hour. Which approach BEST meets these requirements?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common trap is to assume that RDS Multi-AZ provides cross-region replication; however Multi-AZ is a high-availability feature within a single region. For cross-region disaster recovery, asynchronous cross-Region read replicas or other cross-region replication methods are required. A warm standby architecture can be combined with cross-region replication, but the key is the replication mechanism, not Multi-AZ.
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 multi-Region application with Route 53 latency-based routing and RDS read replicas in the DR Region.
The best approach for a multi-Region disaster recovery with RTO of 15 minutes and RPO of 1 hour. By deploying the application in multiple regions and using RDS cross-Region read replicas, data is asynchronously replicated with an RPO typically within seconds to minutes, well within 1 hour. In the event of a failure, the read replica can be promoted to a primary instance, and Route 53 routing (preferably failover routing, but latency-based routing can also redirect traffic) can shift traffic to the DR region. This failover can be completed within a few minutes, meeting the 15-minute RTO. Option A fails because daily snapshots exceed the 1-hour RPO and restore times exceed the RTO. Option C incorrectly relies on RDS Multi-AZ, which is a single-region high-availability feature and does not provide cross-region replication; thus it cannot serve as a disaster recovery solution across regions. Option D, pilot light with snapshots, has a longer RTO as it requires restoring instances from snapshots and starting them, likely exceeding 15 minutes.
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 backup and restore with daily snapshots stored in S3 and cross-Region replication.
Why it's wrong here
Daily snapshots copied to S3 with cross-Region replication provide a restore point only every 24 hours, making the RPO at least 24 hours and thus failing the 1-hour RPO requirement. Moreover, restoring from a snapshot requires recreating EBS volumes or an RDS instance from the snapshot, a process that typically takes 30–60 minutes or more for large databases, so it cannot meet the 15-minute RTO. Cross-Region replication of snapshots is asynchronous and only copies completed snapshots, further delaying data availability in the DR Region.
- ✓
Use a multi-Region application with Route 53 latency-based routing and RDS read replicas in the DR Region.
Why this is correct
Cross-Region RDS read replicas provide asynchronous replication with an RPO of seconds to minutes, meeting the 1-hour RPO. Promoting a read replica and redirecting traffic via Route 53 can be done within minutes, meeting the 15-minute RTO. This is a valid warm standby configuration.
- ✗
Use a warm standby strategy with a scaled-down copy of the production environment in the DR Region, and replicate data using RDS Multi-AZ with synchronous replication.
Why it's wrong here
RDS Multi-AZ is a high-availability feature that synchronously replicates data to a standby instance in a different Availability Zone within the same AWS Region; it does not replicate any data to a separate DR Region. Therefore, this configuration provides no data durability or recoverability in another Region, leaving the application completely unprotected against a Region-wide outage. Even though the warm standby environment itself is pre-provisioned, the database remains single-Region, so the RPO and RTO targets cannot be satisfied for a true disaster recovery scenario.
- ✗
Use a pilot light strategy with EC2 instances stopped and RDS snapshots copied to the DR Region.
Why it's wrong here
The pilot light approach with snapshots requires starting EC2 instances and restoring RDS from a snapshot, which typically takes longer than 15 minutes. The RPO depends on snapshot frequency, which must be at least hourly to meet the 1-hour RPO, but the RTO is not met.
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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.