SAA-C03 Design Resilient Architectures Practice Question
A global application experiences frequent writes and must survive a full Regional outage with near-zero data loss. The product team also requires that users can continue to write during the incident using the closest Region. Which approach is most aligned with these requirements?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse 'read-only replicas' (which cannot accept writes) with 'multi-Region write replicas' (which can), leading them to choose Option D despite its inability to support writes during an outage.
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
✓
Use an active/active design with multi-Region data replication (for example, global tables for the write-heavy datastore) and route traffic to multiple Regions based on health and latency.
An active/active design with multi-Region data replication, such as DynamoDB global tables, allows writes to occur in any Region and replicates data asynchronously across Regions with sub-second latency. This ensures near-zero data loss (RPO of seconds) and continuous write availability during a full Regional outage, while Route 53 latency-based routing directs users to the closest healthy Region.
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 an active/active design with multi-Region data replication (for example, global tables for the write-heavy datastore) and route traffic to multiple Regions based on health and latency.
Why this is correct
Active/active supports writing in multiple Regions and reduces the blast radius of a Regional failure while enabling continued operations.
- ✗
Use warm standby with periodic backups of the primary write datastore every 24 hours.
Why it's wrong here
Periodic backups do not provide near-zero data loss and can cause long RPO during an outage.
- ✗
Use pilot light where the secondary Region runs only infrastructure templates and starts data replication only after detecting failure.
Why it's wrong here
Starting replication after failure defeats the “near-zero data loss” and “write during incident” requirement.
- ✗
Use a single-writer model in one Region and deploy read-only replicas in the other Region for continuity.
Why it's wrong here
Read-only replicas cannot support continued writes during a Regional outage without failover mechanisms.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
One of 302 original SAA-C03 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
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.