SAA-C03 Design Resilient Architectures Practice Question
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.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — 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.
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.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
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.
Why this is correct
This strategy establishes a primary active region and a secondary passive region, where the application stack is fully deployed but not actively serving traffic. Amazon Route 53 health checks continuously monitor the primary region's health. If a failure is detected, the failover routing policy automatically redirects traffic to the healthy secondary region, ensuring business continuity with minimal downtime.
- ✗
Set up Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployment to enable automatic failover to a standby replica in a different Availability Zone within the primary Region.
Why it's wrong here
While Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployments provide high availability and automatic failover within a single AWS Region, they do not protect against a regional disaster. If the entire primary AWS Region becomes unavailable, the Multi-AZ standby replica in a different Availability Zone within that same region would also be affected, failing to meet the multi-region disaster recovery requirement.
- ✓
Use Amazon RDS cross-Region read replicas with automatic failover to promote a read replica to a primary instance in the secondary Region.
Why this is correct
For stateful applications relying on databases, Amazon RDS cross-Region read replicas continuously replicate data from the primary database in one region to a read replica in a secondary region. In a disaster scenario, this read replica can be quickly promoted to a standalone primary instance, minimizing data loss and providing a fully functional database in the secondary region for recovery.
- ✓
Deploy the application and ALB in an active-active configuration across two AWS Regions using Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing.
Why this is correct
An active-active configuration involves deploying the full application stack in two or more AWS Regions, with both regions simultaneously serving traffic. Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing directs user requests to the region that provides the lowest network latency, effectively distributing the load and providing inherent disaster recovery as traffic automatically shifts away from an unhealthy region.
- ✓
Store static assets and application state in Amazon S3 with cross-Region replication enabled, and serve them via Amazon CloudFront.
Why this is correct
Storing static assets and application state in Amazon S3 with cross-Region replication ensures data durability and availability across multiple regions. Amazon CloudFront, a global content delivery network, can then serve these assets from the nearest edge location, improving performance and providing resilience by automatically pulling content from the healthy S3 bucket in either region during a disaster.
- ✗
Use an Amazon RDS for MySQL single-AZ deployment in the primary Region and take daily snapshots copied to the secondary Region.
Why it's wrong here
A single-AZ RDS deployment lacks high availability within the primary region, making it vulnerable to AZ failures. Furthermore, relying on daily snapshots for multi-region disaster recovery results in a high Recovery Point Objective (RPO), meaning up to 24 hours of data could be lost. The manual restoration process from snapshots also leads to a high Recovery Time Objective (RTO), making this approach unsuitable for robust DR.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
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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.