SAA-C03 Design Resilient Architectures Practice Question
An application uses a monolithic architecture on EC2 instances. The company wants to improve resilience against regional failures. Which TWO actions should the architect take to achieve this? (Select TWO.)
⚠ Common exam trap
SAA-C03 often tests the misconception that multi-AZ deployment equals regional resilience, when true regional failover requires cross-region replication and DNS failover.
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 Amazon Route 53 with failover routing policies to a secondary region.
Option B is correct because Route 53 failover routing policies with health checks automatically redirect traffic to a secondary region when the primary region becomes unhealthy, directly providing regional failover capability. Option C is correct because Aurora Global Database replicates data across regions with typical latency under one second, enabling a secondary region to serve reads and support fast promotion during a regional failure, which is essential for cross-region resilience of a stateful monolith. Option A is not correct because deploying across multiple Availability Zones within a single region only protects against AZ-level failures, not regional failures. Option D is not correct because Direct Connect is a dedicated network link between on-premises and AWS (or between regions via Direct Connect Gateway) and does not by itself provide application failover or resilience. Option E is not correct because increasing the minimum EC2 instance count in an Auto Scaling group only adds capacity within a single region and does nothing for regional failure resilience.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Deploy the application to multiple Availability Zones within a single region.
Why it's wrong here
Multi-AZ deployment provides high availability against localized data center failures but does not protect against full regional outages. While it is a best practice for general availability, it fails to meet the specific requirement of regional resilience requested in the scenario.
- ✓
Configure Amazon Route 53 with failover routing policies to a secondary region.
Why this is correct
Route 53 failover routing policies monitor the health of primary region endpoints. If health checks fail, traffic is automatically routed to the secondary region. This is a foundational step in building a resilient multi-region architecture that provides automated business continuity during a regional disaster.
- ✓
Implement Amazon Aurora Global Database for cross-region data replication.
Why this is correct
Aurora Global Database enables fast, low-latency cross-region replication. This ensures that the secondary region has an up-to-date copy of the primary database. In the event of a regional failure, the global database can be promoted to provide full read-write capabilities in the failover region.
- ✗
Use an AWS Direct Connect connection to link the two regions.
Why it's wrong here
Direct Connect is intended for private connectivity between an on-premises data center and AWS, not for replicating data between two AWS regions. While it provides consistent network performance, it does not solve the challenge of regional application failover or state synchronization between regions.
- ✗
Increase the minimum number of EC2 instances in the Auto Scaling group.
Why it's wrong here
Increasing the instance count improves capacity and localized redundancy but does not mitigate risks associated with regional outages. If the entire region goes down, the increased instance count remains unreachable, failing to address the fundamental requirement of regional resilience and disaster recovery planning.
About these practice questions
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Amazon Web Services exam blueprint
This SAA-C03 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 SAA-C03 exam.