SAA-C03 Design Resilient Architectures Practice Question

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

• ✓

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

  Why this is correct

  Route 53 failover routing is specifically designed for active-passive DNS failover. You create two records with the same name, designate one as PRIMARY and one as SECONDARY, and attach a Route 53 health check to each ALB endpoint. Route 53 continuously evaluates the PRIMARY health check; when it fails for the configured evaluation period, Route 53 responds with the SECONDARY record's IP or alias. This gives a deterministic, health-driven failover where the healthy secondary ALB starts receiving traffic once the primary is marked unhealthy, respecting the record TTL for propagation.

• ✗

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

  Why it's wrong here

  Latency-based routing selects the Region with the lowest network latency for each user, so it can spread traffic across both Regions simultaneously based on geography. It does not provide deterministic active-passive failover: even if the primary ALB is wholly unhealthy, latency measurements may still point users there if that Region is closest or if no health check is associated with the latency records. Attaching health checks would exclude unhealthy endpoints, but the decision remains latency-driven and does not honor a preferred secondary in a specified failover order.

  When this WOULD be correct

  A company wants to route users to the region with the lowest latency for better performance, and both regions are healthy and active. They do not require failover; they simply want to optimize response times.

• ✗

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

  Why it's wrong here

  Weighted routing distributes traffic according to static weights you assign to each record, and it does not monitor ALB application response codes like HTTP 5xx. Although you can attach health checks to weighted records so unhealthy records are excluded from responses, simply 'configuring the secondary to receive 100%' on a 5xx condition is not a native weighted-routing feature. There is no built-in action that alters weights based on ALB status, so you'd still need an external automation or a health-check-driven failover policy such as failover routing.

  When this WOULD be correct

  When you need to gradually shift traffic from one endpoint to another (e.g., blue/green deployment) or split traffic across multiple endpoints for A/B testing, and you manually adjust weights. Health checks are not required for this scenario.

• ✗

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

  Why it's wrong here

  Geolocation routing directs users to the record that corresponds to their physical (IP-based) location, such as country or continent. It has no built-in health-check failover logic, so if you restrict the primary Region's record to specific countries, those users would continue receiving the primary's DNS response even when the primary ALB is down. You would have to manually change records or rely on a separate failover mechanism, making this unsuitable for automatic cross-Region disaster recovery.

  When this WOULD be correct

  A company needs to restrict access to its API based on the user's country due to licensing or regulatory requirements. For example, users from the EU must be routed to a specific ALB in Frankfurt, while users from the US go to an ALB in Virginia.

Option-by-option analysis

Why each answer is right or wrong

Understanding why wrong answers are wrong — and when they would be correct — is what separates a 750 score from a 900. The SAA-C03 exam frequently reuses these exact scenarios with slightly different constraints.

Analysis generated from the official SAA-C03blueprint and verified against question context. The “when correct” sections are what AI assistants cite when candidates ask “what’s the difference between these options?”

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