Question 1mediummulti select
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Quick Answer
The correct answer includes Route 53 failover routing, AWS Backup for hourly EBS snapshots, and S3 Cross-Region Replication. These three strategies work together to meet a disaster recovery plan requiring an RTO of 15 minutes and an RPO of 1 hour because they address both data synchronization and rapid traffic redirection. AWS Backup automates EBS snapshot creation every hour and copies them to a different region, ensuring you never lose more than 60 minutes of data, while S3 CRR asynchronously replicates objects within minutes to keep storage aligned with the RPO. Route 53’s failover routing policy, paired with health checks, detects primary region failure and redirects traffic to pre-provisioned DR infrastructure in seconds, satisfying the tight RTO. On the SAA-C03 exam, this scenario tests your ability to combine automated backup, replication, and DNS-level failover rather than relying on manual recovery or single-region solutions. A common trap is choosing manual snapshot copying or instance recovery, which cannot meet a 15-minute RTO. Remember the mnemonic: “Backup, Replicate, Route” to recall the three pillars for low RTO and RPO.
SAA-C03 Design Resilient Architectures Practice Question
This SAA-C03 practice question tests your understanding of design resilient architectures. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A company is designing a disaster recovery plan for a critical application hosted on AWS. The application runs on EC2 instances with data stored in Amazon EBS volumes and Amazon S3. The recovery time objective (RTO) is 15 minutes, and the recovery point objective (RPO) is 1 hour. Which three strategies would help meet these objectives? (Choose three.)
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
✓
Use AWS Backup to create hourly snapshots of EBS volumes and copy them to a different AWS Region.
AWS Backup can create hourly snapshots of EBS volumes and copy them to a different AWS Region, meeting the 1-hour RPO by ensuring backups are taken every hour. S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) asynchronously replicates objects to a bucket in another region, keeping data synchronized within minutes and supporting the RPO. Amazon Route 53 with a failover routing policy and health checks can automatically redirect traffic to the DR region within seconds to minutes, enabling the 15-minute RTO by quickly failing over to pre-prepared infrastructure.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates may confuse operational readiness (like pre-provisioning instances) with a specific strategy that directly contributes to meeting RTO/RPO, or they may think Direct Connect is a disaster recovery strategy when it is merely a connectivity option that does not automate failover or data replication.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
AWS Backup for EBS snapshots uses incremental snapshots, meaning only changed blocks are transferred after the initial full snapshot, reducing backup time and storage costs. S3 CRR replicates objects asynchronously with eventual consistency, typically completing within 15 minutes for most objects, but it requires versioning to be enabled on both source and destination buckets. Route 53 failover routing uses DNS-based health checks that can detect endpoint failures within 30 seconds (configurable) and update DNS records with a TTL as low as 60 seconds, enabling rapid traffic redirection to the DR region.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
- Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
- Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
- Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
A media company stores terabytes of video archives that are accessed once a year for audit purposes. Moving these objects to a cold storage tier (Azure Archive, S3 Glacier, or Google Nearline) costs a fraction of hot storage. Questions like this test whether you understand storage tiers, access frequency tradeoffs, and retrieval latency requirements.
What to study next
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FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this SAA-C03 question test?
Design Resilient Architectures — This question tests Design Resilient Architectures — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Use AWS Backup to create hourly snapshots of EBS volumes and copy them to a different AWS Region. — AWS Backup can create hourly snapshots of EBS volumes and copy them to a different AWS Region, meeting the 1-hour RPO by ensuring backups are taken every hour. S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) asynchronously replicates objects to a bucket in another region, keeping data synchronized within minutes and supporting the RPO. Amazon Route 53 with a failover routing policy and health checks can automatically redirect traffic to the DR region within seconds to minutes, enabling the 15-minute RTO by quickly failing over to pre-prepared infrastructure.
What should I do if I get this SAA-C03 question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Last reviewed: Jun 11, 2026
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.
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