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Question 934 of 1,040

Design Resilient Architectures →mediumMultiple SelectObjective-mapped

Quick Answer

The answer is an active-passive failover strategy with Route 53 health checks, cross-Region RDS read replicas with automatic failover, active-active configuration with latency-based routing, and S3 cross-Region replication served via CloudFront. These four choices together achieve the lowest possible RPO and RTO because they eliminate manual intervention: Route 53’s failover routing policy triggers rapid DNS failover within seconds, RDS read replicas can be promoted in under a minute with near-zero data loss, active-active routing avoids DNS propagation delays by distributing traffic immediately, and S3 replication ensures static assets are durable and instantly accessible. On the SAA-C03 exam, this scenario tests your ability to distinguish between active-passive and active-active architectures for stateless web tiers, with a common trap being to select Multi-AZ RDS instead of cross-Region replicas—Multi-AZ protects within a single Region, not across Regions. Memory tip: think “DNS + DB + dual traffic + durable assets” to recall the four pillars of multi-Region DR with minimal data loss and downtime.

SAA-C03 Design Resilient Architectures Practice Question

This SAA-C03 practice question tests your understanding of design resilient architectures. This is a configuration task: choose the command set that satisfies every stated requirement. Small differences — like 'secret' vs 'password' or 'transport input ssh' vs 'all' — change whether the answer is correct. 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 multi-Region disaster recovery (DR) strategy for a stateless web application running on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application uses an Amazon RDS for MySQL database as its data store. The architecture must provide rapid failover with the lowest possible Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO). Which of the following design choices will help achieve these objectives? (Choose four.)

Question 1mediummulti select

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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 an active-passive failover strategy by deploying the application stack in two AWS Regions and using Amazon Route 53 health checks with a failover routing policy.

An active-passive failover strategy with Route 53 failover routing policy is correct because it provides rapid failover by directing traffic to the secondary Region only when health checks fail in the primary, minimizing RTO. Cross-Region read replicas with automatic failover are correct because they allow promoting a read replica to a primary in the secondary Region with low RPO (typically seconds) and automated failover, reducing RTO. Active-active configuration with latency-based routing is correct because it distributes traffic across both Regions, enabling immediate failover without DNS propagation delays, achieving very low RTO. Storing static assets and application state in S3 with cross-Region replication and CloudFront is correct because it ensures data durability and low-latency access, supporting rapid recovery with minimal RPO.

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 often confuse Multi-AZ (single-Region high availability) with cross-Region DR, or they assume daily snapshots provide adequate RPO for a DR strategy requiring the lowest possible RPO and RTO.

Detailed technical explanation

How to think about this question

Amazon RDS cross-Region read replicas use MySQL's asynchronous replication, typically with a replication lag of seconds, enabling an RPO of a few seconds when promoted. Route 53 failover routing policy relies on health checks that can be configured with a 10-second interval and a 3-second failure threshold, allowing failover in under 30 seconds. Active-active configurations with latency-based routing require the application to be stateless and handle concurrent writes, which is feasible here because the application is stateless and the database can use cross-Region replication for eventual consistency.

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

Got this wrong? Here's your next step.

Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.

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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: Configure an active-passive failover strategy by deploying the application stack in two AWS Regions and using Amazon Route 53 health checks with a failover routing policy. — An active-passive failover strategy with Route 53 failover routing policy is correct because it provides rapid failover by directing traffic to the secondary Region only when health checks fail in the primary, minimizing RTO. Cross-Region read replicas with automatic failover are correct because they allow promoting a read replica to a primary in the secondary Region with low RPO (typically seconds) and automated failover, reducing RTO. Active-active configuration with latency-based routing is correct because it distributes traffic across both Regions, enabling immediate failover without DNS propagation delays, achieving very low RTO. Storing static assets and application state in S3 with cross-Region replication and CloudFront is correct because it ensures data durability and low-latency access, supporting rapid recovery with minimal RPO.

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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Same concept, more angles

1 more ways this is tested on SAA-C03

These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.

Variation 1. A fintech company has a two-Region DR requirement: RPO must be within 15 minutes and RTO must be under 2 hours. To control cost, they do not want to run full production infrastructure in the secondary Region continuously. They plan to continuously replicate the database and keep the application infrastructure in the secondary Region prepared, but at reduced capacity. Which DR strategy best matches this requirement and accurately describes their plan?

medium

A.Pilot light: keep only minimal components (for example, replicated storage and a small amount of core services), so the app scales up during a disaster.
✓ B.Warm standby: keep the essential parts of the application running in the secondary Region at reduced capacity, while using database replication to meet the RPO.
C.Active-active: run the application fully in both Regions with synchronized writes and share traffic continuously.
D.Cold standby: store backups in the secondary Region and provision all infrastructure only during a disaster.

Why B: Warm standby is the correct strategy because it runs a scaled-down version of the production application in the secondary Region continuously, with database replication (e.g., Amazon RDS Multi-Region or Aurora Global Database) meeting the 15-minute RPO. The reduced-capacity infrastructure can be scaled up within the 2-hour RTO during a disaster, balancing cost and recovery requirements.

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