ANS-C01 Network Design Practice Question
A company is planning to connect its on-premises data center to AWS using AWS Direct Connect. The company requires high availability and wants to ensure that if one Direct Connect connection fails, traffic automatically fails over to another. Which THREE design elements should be included?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently think a single router with multiple connections provides sufficient redundancy, but they overlook that the router itself is a single point of failure, which violates high availability principles.
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
✓
Provision two Direct Connect connections at different AWS Direct Connect locations.
Provisioning two Direct Connect connections at different AWS Direct Connect locations ensures physical diversity. If one location fails, the other connection remains available, providing high availability. This design eliminates a single point of failure at the network edge.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Provision two Direct Connect connections at different AWS Direct Connect locations.
Why this is correct
Provides physical diversity.
- ✗
Use a single customer router with multiple connections to both Direct Connect locations.
Why it's wrong here
Single router is a single point of failure.
- ✗
Configure a VPN connection as a backup to Direct Connect.
Why it's wrong here
Not necessary; two Direct Connect connections can provide failover.
- ✓
Use BGP to exchange routes between the on-premises routers and AWS.
Why this is correct
BGP detects path failures and updates routing tables.
- ✓
Advertise the same BGP prefixes from both on-premises routers.
Why this is correct
Allows AWS to choose the available path.
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Same concept, more angles
3 more ways this is tested on ANS-C01
These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.
Variation 1. A company is using AWS Direct Connect to connect its on-premises data center to a VPC. They want to ensure high availability and failover. Which TWO configurations should they implement? (Select TWO.)
medium- ✓ A.Configure a Site-to-Site VPN connection as a backup.
- B.Create a Direct Connect Gateway and attach multiple VPCs.
- C.Use a single Direct Connect connection with two virtual interfaces.
- ✓ D.Provision a second Direct Connect connection at a different location.
- E.Use the same Direct Connect connection with multiple VLANs.
Why A: A Site-to-Site VPN over the internet provides a cost-effective, diverse backup path if the Direct Connect connection fails. This ensures high availability by using a different physical medium and network path, allowing traffic to failover automatically via BGP route propagation when the Direct Connect link goes down.
Variation 2. A company is connecting its on-premises data center to AWS using AWS Direct Connect. The company has two Direct Connect connections and wants to ensure high availability. The on-premises network uses BGP to advertise routes to AWS. Which combination of steps should be taken to achieve the most resilient design? (Choose TWO.)
hard- A.Provision a single private virtual interface and use both connections for link aggregation.
- ✓ B.Provision two private virtual interfaces, one over each Direct Connect connection.
- C.Configure static routes instead of BGP to simplify the design.
- D.Use the same BGP ASN for both connections.
- ✓ E.Advertise the same prefixes from both connections with different BGP communities to influence traffic.
Why B: Provisioning two private virtual interfaces, one over each Direct Connect connection, ensures that if one connection or virtual interface fails, BGP can continue to route traffic over the other. This design provides redundancy at both the physical layer (connections) and the logical layer (virtual interfaces), which is essential for high availability.
Variation 3. A company wants to connect its VPC to an on-premises data center using AWS Direct Connect. The company has two Direct Connect locations in the same AWS region. For high availability, they plan to establish two separate connections. Which configuration ensures that if one connection fails, traffic automatically fails over to the other?
easy- A.Establish one Direct Connect connection and one AWS Site-to-Site VPN connection as backup.
- B.Establish two Direct Connect connections from the same Direct Connect location to the same VPC.
- ✓ C.Establish two Direct Connect connections from different Direct Connect locations to the same VPC, each with a private VIF attached to the same virtual private gateway.
- D.Establish a single Direct Connect connection with two virtual interfaces (VIFs) to the same VPC.
Why C: It provides true high availability by using two Direct Connect connections from different geographic locations, each with a private virtual interface (VIF) attached to the same virtual private gateway (VGW). This configuration ensures that if one connection fails, BGP sessions automatically withdraw the affected routes, and traffic is rerouted over the remaining connection via the VGW's active/active or active/passive routing behavior.
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This ANS-C01 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 ANS-C01 exam.