DOP-C02 Incident and Event Response Practice Question
A DevOps engineer is designing an incident response plan for a multi-region application. The application runs on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB) and uses Amazon RDS for MySQL with Multi-AZ. Which TWO actions should the engineer include to ensure high availability and fast failover during a regional incident?
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
✓
Set up an Amazon RDS read replica in a second region and promote it during failover.
Options A and E are correct. Amazon RDS read replicas can be created in a different region and promoted to a standalone primary instance during a regional incident, providing a disaster recovery solution. Amazon Route 53 with health checks can automatically fail over DNS traffic to a secondary region by routing to a healthy endpoint. Option B is incorrect because Auto Scaling groups are regional and cannot launch instances across multiple regions directly; you would need separate Auto Scaling groups per region. Option C is incorrect because an Application Load Balancer is regional and cannot span regions; you would need separate ALBs in each region and Route 53 to route traffic. Option D is incorrect because Multi-AZ RDS replicates synchronously within a single region only; for cross-region disaster recovery, you need a read replica or a separate Multi-AZ deployment in the other region, not Multi-AZ in a second region (Multi-AZ in a second region is not a standard feature; you would need a separate RDS instance).
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Set up an Amazon RDS read replica in a second region and promote it during failover.
Why this is correct
For a true cross-region disaster recovery, an Amazon RDS read replica in a second region can be promoted to a standalone primary instance during failover. The replica is typically created with asynchronous replication, so some data loss may occur, but it provides a writable database endpoint in the secondary region. This is a standard DR pattern for maintaining business continuity.
- ✗
Create an Auto Scaling group that can launch instances in multiple regions.
Why it's wrong here
Auto Scaling groups are inherently regional resources; they cannot launch instances across multiple regions. To run instances in multiple regions, you must configure separate Auto Scaling groups in each region, often with a traffic routing service like Route 53 or Global Accelerator to distribute load. Therefore, a single Auto Scaling group cannot satisfy a cross-region incident response plan.
- ✗
Deploy an Application Load Balancer that spans both regions.
Why it's wrong here
Application Load Balancer (ALB) operates regionally and only routes traffic to targets within the same region. It cannot span regions or forward requests to instances in a different AWS region. For cross-region load balancing, you would need a global service such as Route 53 with latency-based or failover routing, or AWS Global Accelerator, not an ALB.
- ✗
Configure Amazon RDS Multi-AZ in a second region.
Why it's wrong here
Amazon RDS Multi-AZ provides high availability by maintaining a synchronous standby replica in a different Availability Zone within the same region. It does not offer cross-region failover and cannot be configured to an instance in a second region. For cross-region DR, you must use an RDS read replica in the target region or an Aurora Global Database.
- ✓
Use Amazon Route 53 with health checks to fail over DNS to a secondary region.
Why this is correct
Route 53 health checks combined with failover routing policies can automatically redirect user traffic to a secondary region when the primary endpoint fails. This is a correct and essential component for cross-region failover at the DNS level. However, it only handles traffic routing; you still need backend resources (e.g., RDS read replica promoted, or EC2 instances in another region) to actually serve the requests.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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