SAA-C03 Design Resilient Architectures Practice Question
An enterprise financial application stores critical transaction records in Amazon Aurora MySQL. The company requires a cross-Region disaster recovery strategy with a Recovery Point Objective of less than 1 minute and a Recovery Time Objective of less than 5 minutes. Which architecture achieves this?
⚠ Common exam trap
SAA-C03 often tests RPO/RTO numbers — candidates pick Multi-AZ or DMS thinking they provide cross-Region DR, but only Aurora Global Database delivers sub-second RPO and sub-minute RTO across Regions.
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
✓
Implement Amazon Aurora Global Databases with a primary writer Region and a cross-Region reader Region.
Amazon Aurora Global Database is designed for cross-Region disaster recovery with typical replication latency under 1 second, easily meeting the RPO of less than 1 minute. It supports fast failover to a secondary Region, typically completing in under 1 minute, which satisfies the RTO of less than 5 minutes. This is the purpose-built solution for low-RPO, low-RTO cross-Region DR on Aurora.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Take daily automated snapshots of the primary Aurora database and copy the snapshot to a secondary AWS Region.
Why it's wrong here
Daily snapshots result in a Recovery Point Objective of up to 24 hours, which drastically misses the strict requirement of less than 1 minute. Furthermore, restoring databases from snapshots takes significant time, violating the fast Recovery Time Objective.
- ✓
Implement Amazon Aurora Global Databases with a primary writer Region and a cross-Region reader Region.
Why this is correct
Aurora Global Database replicates committed writes to a secondary Region with typical latency under one second, meeting the sub-one-minute RPO. Promoting the secondary reader to writer completes in under a minute, satisfying the five-minute RTO for cross-Region disaster recovery.
- ✗
Configure standard MySQL asynchronous replication from an Amazon EC2 instance running MySQL in one Region to another.
Why it's wrong here
Self-managed MySQL on EC2 with asynchronous replication cannot meet a sub-one-minute RPO or sub-five-minute RTO, since failover requires manual promotion and DNS changes. It is tempting because EC2-hosted MySQL suits lift-and-shift migrations or workloads needing engine versions Aurora does not offer.
- ✗
Deploy a multi-AZ Aurora cluster and use AWS Database Migration Service for continuous replication to another Region.
Why it's wrong here
Multi-AZ Aurora replicates only within one Region, and DMS continuous replication adds latency exceeding the one-minute RPO while still requiring manual cutover. It is tempting because DMS suits ongoing heterogeneous migrations or replicating into analytics stores, not rapid cross-Region failover.
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.