SAA-C03 Multi-AZ deployment Practice Question
A claims workflow uses an RDS MySQL database and must remain available during an Availability Zone failure with minimal application changes. What should the architect enable?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse read replicas (which are for read scaling and manual promotion) with Multi-AZ (which provides automatic failover and high availability), leading them to select 'Read replicas only' as a cheaper but incorrect alternative.
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
✓
Multi-AZ deployment for the RDS DB instance
Multi-AZ deployment for RDS MySQL automatically provisions and maintains a synchronous standby replica in a different Availability Zone. In the event of an AZ failure, Amazon RDS automatically fails over to the standby, providing high availability with minimal application changes (the application simply reconnects to the same endpoint). This meets the requirement for availability during an AZ outage without requiring code modifications.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
S3 Cross-Region Replication
Why it's wrong here
S3 Cross-Region Replication copies objects between buckets and has no relationship to an RDS MySQL instance, so it cannot keep the claims database available. It is correct when the workload stores data in S3 and needs cross-Region object durability, not relational failover.
- ✓
Multi-AZ deployment for the RDS DB instance
Why this is correct
Multi-AZ deployment maintains a synchronous standby replica in a second Availability Zone and automatically fails over the DB instance during an AZ outage, requiring no application connection-string changes. This satisfies the availability and minimal-change constraints.
- ✗
EBS snapshots every hour
Why it's wrong here
EBS snapshots capture point-in-time backups for restore into a new instance, requiring manual intervention and downtime, so they cannot maintain availability during an AZ failure. They are the right choice for disaster recovery or long-term backup retention, not automatic failover.
- ✗
Read replicas only
Why it's wrong here
Read replicas are asynchronous copies that serve read traffic; they cannot be promoted automatically and provide no standby for write availability during an AZ failure. They suit offloading reporting queries from a primary instance, not meeting a failover requirement without application changes.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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.