DOP-C02 Resilient Cloud Solutions Practice Question
A DevOps team is designing a disaster recovery plan for an RDS MySQL database. The database must be recoverable with minimal data loss in case of a regional failure. Which solution provides the LOWEST Recovery Point Objective (RPO)?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse Multi-AZ deployments (which provide high availability within a region with zero RPO) with cross-region disaster recovery, mistakenly thinking synchronous replication across regions is possible, but AWS RDS does not support synchronous replication across regions, and Multi-AZ does not protect against regional 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
✓
Configure a Cross-Region Read Replica.
A Cross-Region Read Replica provides the lowest Recovery Point Objective (RPO) because it uses asynchronous replication to continuously replicate data changes from the primary region to a replica in another region. In the event of a regional failure, you can promote the replica to a standalone primary database, typically losing only a few seconds to minutes of data, depending on replication lag. This minimizes data loss compared to snapshot-based or batch replication methods.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Configure a Cross-Region Read Replica.
Why this is correct
A Cross-Region Read Replica uses Amazon RDS's asynchronous replication to continuously apply transactions from the primary DB instance to a replica in a different AWS Region. This typically achieves an RPO in the low seconds (usually 1–5 seconds) and a short RTO by promoting the replica to a standalone primary via the console or API. Because replication is ongoing, it minimizes data loss far more effectively than any interval-based snapshot strategy.
- ✗
Take daily automated snapshots and copy them to another Region.
Why it's wrong here
Automated snapshots capture the database only once per day at a scheduled backup window, so the recovery point objective is up to 24 hours of lost transactions. Copying those snapshots to another Region provides regional redundancy, but does not improve the RPO—it remains tied to the daily snapshot frequency. Recovery also requires restoring the snapshot to a new DB instance and then shifting traffic, adding operational latency well beyond that of promoting a replica. This approach suits compliance and DR with moderate RPO, not sub-minute data loss tolerance.
- ✗
Use a Multi-AZ deployment with synchronous standby.
Why it's wrong here
Multi-AZ deployments synchronously replicate data to a standby in a different Availability Zone within the same Region, using synchronous replication to keep the standby transactionally consistent. This protects against AZ failures and database instance problems, but it does not provide any cross-Region resilience. If the entire Region becomes unavailable, both the primary and the standby are lost, so Multi-AZ is strictly a high-availability feature rather than a regional disaster recovery mechanism.
- ✗
Use RDS Proxy to cache database writes.
Why it's wrong here
RDS Proxy is a fully managed connection pooler that sits between applications and RDS, reducing connection overhead and improving scalability, but it does not store, replicate, or cache any data. It does not cache writes—all database writes are committed directly to the underlying RDS instance. RDS Proxy has no failover mechanism for another Region and no data recovery capability, so it is entirely irrelevant to cross-region disaster recovery.
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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.