Question 1mediummultiple choice
Full question →mediummultiple choiceObjective-mapped
A payments platform requires disaster recovery across Regions. Requirements: RPO of 15 minutes and RTO of about 1 hour. The business cannot afford full duplicate capacity in both Regions all the time, but the team wants automated readiness so failover is mostly operationally guided rather than a slow rebuild. Which DR strategy is the best fit?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Good practice is not just finding the correct option. The wrong answers often show the exact trap the exam wants you to fall into.
A
Distractor review
Backup and restore only, relying on scheduled snapshots and manual restores during incidents.
Backup/restore can meet data-loss tolerance in some cases, but RTO of 1 hour is often too aggressive for manual restores.
B
Distractor review
Pilot light, keeping only minimal infrastructure in the secondary Region and starting full services after failover.
Pilot light is cheaper, but RTO of 1 hour may not be achievable if full compute/services must be brought up from near-zero.
C
Best answer
Warm standby, keeping core infrastructure and a partially provisioned environment ready in the secondary Region with frequent data replication.
Warm standby balances cost and readiness by keeping enough capacity and services running to shorten recovery time while meeting RPO needs.
D
Distractor review
Active/active, routing production traffic to both Regions continuously and accepting dual-region complexity.
Active/active best fits very low RTO and high availability, but it usually costs more than the stated budget constraints.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
Many certification questions include familiar terms but test a specific constraint. Read the exact wording before choosing an answer that is generally true but wrong for this case.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
This question should be treated as a scenario, not a definition check. Identify the problem, the constraint and the best action. Then compare each option against those facts.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
- Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
- Use explanations to understand the rule behind the answer.
TExam Day Tips
- Underline the problem statement mentally.
- Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
- Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Related practice questions
Related SAA-C03 practice-question pages
Use these pages to review the topic behind this question. This is how one missed question becomes focused revision.
SAA-C03 VPC practice questions
Practise SAA-C03 questions linked to SAA-C03 VPC.
SAA-C03 S3 lifecycle policy questions
Practise SAA-C03 questions linked to SAA-C03 S3 lifecycle policy questions.
SAA-C03 RDS Multi-AZ questions
Practise SAA-C03 questions linked to SAA-C03 RDS Multi-AZ questions.
SAA-C03 IAM policy practice questions
Practise SAA-C03 questions linked to SAA-C03 IAM policy.
SAA-C03 Route 53 failover questions
Practise SAA-C03 questions linked to SAA-C03 Route 53 failover questions.
SAA-C03 CloudFront practice questions
Practise SAA-C03 questions linked to SAA-C03 CloudFront.
SAA-C03 NAT gateway questions
Practise SAA-C03 questions linked to SAA-C03 NAT gateway questions.
SAA-C03 VPC endpoint questions
Practise SAA-C03 questions linked to SAA-C03 VPC endpoint questions.
SAA-C03 Auto Scaling practice questions
Practise SAA-C03 questions linked to SAA-C03 Auto Scaling.
SAA-C03 disaster recovery questions
Practise SAA-C03 questions linked to SAA-C03 disaster recovery questions.
SAA-C03 high availability questions
Practise SAA-C03 questions linked to SAA-C03 high availability questions.
SAA-C03 cost optimization questions
Practise SAA-C03 questions linked to SAA-C03 cost optimization questions.
More questions from this exam
Keep practising from the same exam bank, or move into a focused topic page if this question exposed a weak area.
Question 1
A team needs to distribute TCP traffic (not HTTP) across multiple services. The services must see the original client source IP for auditing. Which AWS load balancer is the best fit?
Question 2
A team wants to run containerized services with AWS-managed orchestration and autoscaling. They do NOT require Kubernetes compatibility. Which AWS service choice is most appropriate to meet these goals?
Question 3
A solutions architect is designing an S3 bucket for a IoT ingestion API. The objects must never be publicly accessible, even if a developer later adds an overly broad bucket policy. What should the architect configure? The design must avoid adding custom operational scripts.
Question 4
A solutions architect is designing an S3 bucket for a claims portal. The objects must never be publicly accessible, even if a developer later adds an overly broad bucket policy. What should the architect configure?
Question 5
A team wants to delegate IAM management to developers, but must ensure developers can never grant themselves permissions beyond a specific limit. Which AWS mechanism best matches this requirement?
Question 6
A solutions architect is designing an S3 bucket for a healthcare document service. The objects must never be publicly accessible, even if a developer later adds an overly broad bucket policy. What should the architect configure?
FAQ
Questions learners often ask
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, keeping core infrastructure and a partially provisioned environment ready in the secondary Region with frequent data replication. — Warm standby is designed for scenarios where you need a moderate RTO (minutes to about an hour) and an acceptable RPO due to frequent replication, without paying for full duplicate capacity at all times. Compared with pilot light, warm standby keeps more of the environment (core services and partial compute) ready, so failover involves scaling up rather than rebuilding everything. Backup/restore alone often fails RTO targets because restores and redeployments take longer. Why others are wrong: Backup/restore (A) can satisfy some RPO but typically misses tight RTO because restores and service bring-up are operationally heavy. Pilot light (B) keeps minimal resources and often requires significant scaling and provisioning after the incident, risking RTO overshoot. Active/active (D) can meet RTO easily but usually conflicts with the “cannot afford full duplicate capacity” constraint.
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.
Discussion
Loading comments…
Sign in to join the discussion.