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 CRR applies to S3 objects, not RDS failover.
- ✓
Multi-AZ deployment for the RDS DB instance
Why this is correct
Multi-AZ provides synchronous standby replication and automatic failover within a Region.
- ✗
EBS snapshots every hour
Why it's wrong here
Snapshots help recovery but do not provide automatic high availability.
- ✗
Read replicas only
Why it's wrong here
Read replicas improve read scalability and can support DR, but they are not the primary automatic AZ failover feature.
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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.