A production Amazon RDS database has automated backups enabled. An application mistakenly updates a table and the issue is discovered one hour later. The team needs to restore the database to the exact state it had 45 minutes ago. Which approach best meets the requirement?

Restore only from the latest daily snapshot, then manually undo the last hour’s changes.

Latest snapshot granularity is typically not specific enough for restoring to 45 minutes ago precisely.

Increase Multi-AZ to generate a new standby and redirect traffic back to the previous primary state.

Multi-AZ provides HA, not historical data recovery to a prior timestamp state.

Stop the database and change the application to ignore the table going forward.

This prevents future incorrect reads but does not restore historical data back to 45 minutes ago.

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: Perform a point-in-time restore to a timestamp within the automated backup window. — With automated backups enabled, Amazon RDS supports point-in-time recovery (PITR). PITR can restore the database to a specific timestamp within the backup retention window, which satisfies the “45 minutes ago” requirement. In practice, the team creates a new restored DB instance at that time and then either promotes or swaps to use it. Other options either lack time precision (daily snapshots) or address availability rather than historical state recovery. Restoring from the latest daily snapshot does not provide minute-level precision needed for 45 minutes ago. Multi-AZ is for failover/availability and cannot revert data state to a historical time. Stopping or ignoring the table avoids the immediate symptom but does not recover the corrupted historical data.

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.