DOP-C02 Resilient Cloud Solutions Practice Question
A DevOps team is designing a disaster recovery solution for an Amazon RDS for MySQL database. The primary database is in us-east-1, and the recovery point objective (RPO) is 5 minutes, recovery time objective (RTO) is 1 hour. Which solution meets these requirements?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse Multi-AZ (high availability within a Region) with cross-Region disaster recovery, assuming Multi-AZ protects against Regional failures, but it only protects against Availability Zone failures within the same Region.
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
✓
Create a cross-Region read replica in the secondary Region.
A cross-Region read replica in the secondary Region meets the RPO of 5 minutes because replication from the primary RDS instance to the read replica is asynchronous but typically completes within seconds to a few minutes, well under the 5-minute threshold. In a disaster, promoting the read replica to a standalone instance can be done manually or automated, and the RTO of 1 hour is achievable because promotion takes only a few minutes, leaving ample time for DNS and application failover. This solution provides a continuous replication stream without manual intervention, unlike snapshot-based approaches.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Enable Multi-AZ deployment for high availability.
Why it's wrong here
Multi-AZ deployment creates a synchronously replicated standby in a different Availability Zone within the same Region, giving automatic failover only for an AZ-level disruption. It does not place any infrastructure in a second Region, so a Regional outage or data-center loss cannot be recovered from using this configuration, and it offers no cross-Region RPO/RTO guarantee. This makes it a high-availability feature, not a disaster-recovery strategy.
- ✓
Create a cross-Region read replica in the secondary Region.
Why this is correct
A cross-Region read replica uses asynchronous replication to continuously copy changes from the source DB instance to a replica in the secondary Region, keeping data loss typically within 5 minutes. In a disaster, you can promote this replica to a standalone primary instance, which is a fast, reversible operation that meets the 1-hour RTO. This is the only option that both maintains an up-to-date copy in another Region and provides a ready-to-activate target for write traffic.
- ✗
Take manual snapshots and copy them to the secondary Region daily.
Why it's wrong here
Taking manual snapshots once per day means that any changes committed in the up to 24 hours after the last snapshot are lost, far exceeding the required 5-minute RPO. Copying those snapshots to the secondary Region adds transfer time and complexity, and restoring still requires creating a new DB instance from the snapshot before traffic can be redirected, which is unlikely to complete within the 1-hour RTO. The manual schedule also requires operational discipline, yet still cannot approach the recovery point achievable with continuous replication.
- ✗
Configure automated backups with a retention period of 35 days.
Why it's wrong here
Automated backups with a 35-day retention period enable point-in-time recovery only within the source Region, because the backup files and transaction logs are stored there. They do not automatically replicate to a secondary Region, so in a Regional failure you would have no accessible backup copy to restore from. This configuration supports same-Region recovery from accidental deletion or corruption, but it fails to provide any cross-Region recovery point objective or recovery time objective.
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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.