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.

• ✓

  Create an Aurora MySQL cluster with one writer instance and two Aurora Replicas distributed across three Availability Zones, and connect the application to the cluster reader endpoint for read queries and the cluster endpoint for writes.

  Why this is correct

  Aurora stores six copies of data across three Availability Zones, and distributing the writer plus two Aurora Replicas across those zones means a zone failure leaves surviving replicas available. Aurora automatically promotes a replica to writer and updates the cluster endpoint, so the application reconnects without manual steps, while the reader endpoint load-balances read queries across the replicas.

• ✗

  Create an Aurora MySQL cluster with one writer instance and enable Aurora Global Database with a secondary cluster in a different Region, directing all reads to the secondary Region's reader endpoint.

  Why it's wrong here

  Aurora Global Database addresses cross-Region disaster recovery, not the loss of a single Availability Zone, and a secondary Region cluster is read-only until a managed failover is initiated. Sending application reads to another Region also adds cross-Region latency for analytics queries that could be served locally by Aurora Replicas in the same Region.

• ✗

  Create an Aurora MySQL cluster with one writer instance, and configure an Amazon Route 53 failover record that points to a standby cluster in the same Region when health checks fail.

  Why it's wrong here

  Aurora already handles intra-Region Availability Zone failover internally, so a second cluster in the same Region adds cost and a separate data set rather than zone resilience. A Route 53 failover record can only redirect DNS to another endpoint; it cannot promote a replica or guarantee that the standby cluster holds the same committed data, and the failover still requires the standby to exist and be maintained.

• ✗

  Create an Aurora MySQL cluster with a single writer instance and one reader instance in the same Availability Zone, and enable automated backups with a 35-day retention period.

  Why it's wrong here

  Placing both the writer and reader in one Availability Zone concentrates all database capacity in a single failure domain, so a zone loss takes down writes and reads together. Automated backups protect against data loss and accidental deletion but restore to a point in time only when a human initiates the restore, so they do not satisfy the no-operator-action requirement.

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