Courseiva
← SAA-C03
Full test
mediummultiple choiceObjective-mapped

A company runs an internet-facing API in two AWS Regions. Route 53 currently uses simple routing to a primary Application Load Balancer (ALB) DNS name. When the primary Region experiences an outage, customers wait a long time because the DNS entry is not changed automatically.

The team wants automatic failover: if the primary Region ALB health check fails for a sustained period, Route 53 should route users to the secondary Region ALB.

Which Route 53 approach best meets this requirement?

Question 1mediummultiple choice
Full question →

A company runs an internet-facing API in two AWS Regions. Route 53 currently uses simple routing to a primary Application Load Balancer (ALB) DNS name. When the primary Region experiences an outage, customers wait a long time because the DNS entry is not changed automatically.

The team wants automatic failover: if the primary Region ALB health check fails for a sustained period, Route 53 should route users to the secondary Region ALB.

Which Route 53 approach best meets this requirement?

Full question →

Answer choices

Why each option matters

Good practice is not just finding the correct option. The wrong answers often show the exact trap the exam wants you to fall into.

A

Best answer

Use Route 53 failover routing with a PRIMARY and SECONDARY record set for the same name, and attach health checks to the ALBs.

Failover routing is designed for active/passive DNS failover. Route 53 evaluates health checks for the PRIMARY record and automatically serves the SECONDARY record when the PRIMARY is considered unhealthy for the configured evaluation period.

B

Distractor review

Use latency-based routing so Route 53 automatically spreads traffic to both Regions based on measured latency.

Latency-based routing changes where traffic goes based on latency, not on deterministic health-based failover. It may still send traffic to an unhealthy Region until latency measurements indicate otherwise.

C

Distractor review

Use weighted routing and configure the secondary ALB to receive 100% traffic when the primary returns HTTP 5xx responses.

Weighted routing does not natively switch weights based on ALB response codes with sustained unhealthy detection. You would still need a health-check-driven failover mechanism rather than relying on weighted distribution rules.

D

Distractor review

Use geolocation routing and restrict the primary Region record to specific countries only.

Geolocation routing targets traffic by customer location. It does not inherently provide automatic health-based failover between Regions.

Common exam trap

Common exam trap: NAT rules depend on direction and matching traffic

NAT is not only about the public address. The inside/outside interface roles and the ACL or rule that matches traffic are just as important.

Technical deep dive

How to think about this question

NAT questions usually test address translation, overload/PAT behaviour, static mappings and whether the right traffic is being translated. Read the interface direction and address terms carefully.

KKey Concepts to Remember

  • Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
  • PAT allows many inside hosts to share one public address using ports.
  • Inside local and inside global describe the private and translated addresses.
  • NAT ACLs identify traffic for translation, not always security filtering.

TExam Day Tips

  • Identify inside and outside interfaces first.
  • Check whether the scenario needs static NAT, dynamic NAT or PAT.
  • Do not confuse NAT matching ACLs with normal packet-filtering intent.

Related practice questions

Related SAA-C03 practice-question pages

Use these pages to review the topic behind this question. This is how one missed question becomes focused revision.

SAA-C03 VPC practice questions

Practise SAA-C03 questions linked to SAA-C03 VPC.

SAA-C03 S3 lifecycle policy questions

Practise SAA-C03 questions linked to SAA-C03 S3 lifecycle policy questions.

SAA-C03 RDS Multi-AZ questions

Practise SAA-C03 questions linked to SAA-C03 RDS Multi-AZ questions.

SAA-C03 IAM policy practice questions

Practise SAA-C03 questions linked to SAA-C03 IAM policy.

SAA-C03 Route 53 failover questions

Practise SAA-C03 questions linked to SAA-C03 Route 53 failover questions.

SAA-C03 CloudFront practice questions

Practise SAA-C03 questions linked to SAA-C03 CloudFront.

SAA-C03 NAT gateway questions

Practise SAA-C03 questions linked to SAA-C03 NAT gateway questions.

SAA-C03 VPC endpoint questions

Practise SAA-C03 questions linked to SAA-C03 VPC endpoint questions.

SAA-C03 Auto Scaling practice questions

Practise SAA-C03 questions linked to SAA-C03 Auto Scaling.

SAA-C03 disaster recovery questions

Practise SAA-C03 questions linked to SAA-C03 disaster recovery questions.

SAA-C03 high availability questions

Practise SAA-C03 questions linked to SAA-C03 high availability questions.

SAA-C03 cost optimization questions

Practise SAA-C03 questions linked to SAA-C03 cost optimization questions.

More questions from this exam

Keep practising from the same exam bank, or move into a focused topic page if this question exposed a weak area.

Question 1

A team needs to distribute TCP traffic (not HTTP) across multiple services. The services must see the original client source IP for auditing. Which AWS load balancer is the best fit?

Question 2

A team wants to run containerized services with AWS-managed orchestration and autoscaling. They do NOT require Kubernetes compatibility. Which AWS service choice is most appropriate to meet these goals?

Question 3

A solutions architect is designing an S3 bucket for a IoT ingestion API. The objects must never be publicly accessible, even if a developer later adds an overly broad bucket policy. What should the architect configure? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.

Question 4

A solutions architect is designing an S3 bucket for a claims portal. The objects must never be publicly accessible, even if a developer later adds an overly broad bucket policy. What should the architect configure?

Question 5

A team wants to delegate IAM management to developers, but must ensure developers can never grant themselves permissions beyond a specific limit. Which AWS mechanism best matches this requirement?

Question 6

A solutions architect is designing an S3 bucket for a healthcare document service. The objects must never be publicly accessible, even if a developer later adds an overly broad bucket policy. What should the architect configure?

FAQ

Questions learners often ask

What does this SAA-C03 question test?

Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.

What is the correct answer to this question?

The correct answer is: Use Route 53 failover routing with a PRIMARY and SECONDARY record set for the same name, and attach health checks to the ALBs. — Route 53 failover routing is purpose-built for health-based automatic DNS switching between a PRIMARY and a SECONDARY endpoint. With a PRIMARY/SECONDARY configuration (same record name, different routing health policies), Route 53 uses the attached ALB health checks to decide which record set to return. Health check settings such as interval and failure threshold ensure failover occurs only after sustained failure, reducing sensitivity to brief blips. Why others are wrong: Latency-based, weighted, and geolocation routing can alter traffic patterns, but they do not provide the deterministic, health-check-driven active/passive failover behavior required. Weighted routing does not automatically transition to 100% secondary based on sustained unhealthy status without a health-check failover design. Only failover routing directly ties DNS responses to sustained health check failure of the primary endpoint.

What should I do if I get this SAA-C03 question wrong?

Then try more questions from the same exam bank and focus on understanding why the wrong options are tempting.

Discussion

Loading comments…

Sign in to join the discussion.