A company runs the same public API in two regions (Region A and Region B), each fronted by an ALB. They want Route 53 to automatically route clients to the Region B API when Region A becomes unhealthy, with minimal configuration effort. Which Route 53 approach should they use?

Use a single Route 53 A record that points only to Region A’s ALB and manually update it after failures.

A single-record setup does not provide automatic failover and still requires manual changes during outages.

Use Route 53 latency-based routing with separate records for each region.

Latency-based routing optimizes user proximity, but it does not automatically fail over based on health checks.

Use weighted routing and set the Region B weight to 0 to ensure it is only used when needed.

Weighted routing does not react to health status. Weight changes are not automatic failover responses.

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 health checks for each region’s endpoint. — Route 53 failover routing is designed for primary/secondary scenarios and works with health checks to automatically shift traffic when a primary endpoint is unhealthy. In this case, you configure one record as the primary pointing to Region A’s ALB and another as the secondary pointing to Region B’s ALB. Route 53 continually evaluates health check results and responds by serving clients from the appropriate endpoint, minimizing downtime and manual operations during region impairment. Why others are wrong: A single A record cannot automatically change destinations and still requires manual intervention. Latency-based routing chooses endpoints based on performance, not endpoint health, so it will not reliably fail over during outages. Weighted routing with Region B at weight 0 also won’t route automatically on failure, because weights are not health-aware mechanisms.

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.