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?

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.

Pilot light keeps fewer components running, which usually means the environment must scale up significantly during failover. Scaling from minimal capacity often makes it difficult to reliably meet an RTO under 2 hours.

Active-active: run the application fully in both Regions with synchronized writes and share traffic continuously.

Active-active generally requires running full production capacity in both Regions, which contradicts the requirement to avoid running full production infrastructure in the secondary Region at all times.

Cold standby: store backups in the secondary Region and provision all infrastructure only during a disaster.

Cold standby typically requires substantial provisioning and deployment work during failover. That usually exceeds a 2-hour RTO, even if backups are available in the secondary Region.

What does this SAA-C03 question test?

Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.

What is the correct answer to this question?

The correct answer is: 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. — Warm standby is the best fit. In warm standby, the secondary Region runs essential components at reduced capacity so failover is faster (helping meet the sub-2-hour RTO). Continuous replication keeps the database current enough to satisfy the 15-minute RPO requirement. Pilot light tends to scale up from near-minimum capacity (often risking RTO), and cold standby provisions during the disaster (almost certainly exceeding the RTO). Active-active is typically more expensive because it runs full production capacity in both Regions, which conflicts with the cost constraint. Option A (pilot light) keeps less infrastructure running and often requires scaling during failover, which can violate a strict RTO target. Option C (active-active) conflicts with the stated desire to avoid full production infrastructure in the secondary Region. Option D (cold standby) requires provisioning and deployment during a disaster, which generally cannot meet a 2-hour RTO.

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.