Question 1easymultiple choice
Full question →easymultiple choiceObjective-mapped
A retail platform needs disaster recovery across AWS Regions. The business requirement is: RTO up to 6 hours, RPO up to 1 hour, and they want the ability to start serving quickly during a Region outage but do not want to run full production capacity continuously. Which DR strategy best fits these requirements?
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, with no continuously running infrastructure in the secondary Region.
Backups with no warm infrastructure typically lead to longer recovery times and may miss a 6-hour RTO target.
B
Distractor review
Pilot light, keeping only the minimum resources needed to bootstrap the environment.
Pilot light usually provides very limited capacity and may still take too long to become fully operational within 6 hours.
C
Best answer
Warm standby, keeping a reduced but ready-to-scale environment in the secondary Region.
Warm standby maintains enough infrastructure to reduce recovery time, while not fully running production capacity continuously.
D
Distractor review
Multi-site active-active, serving production traffic from both Regions at all times.
Active-active involves running full production in both Regions, which is more operationally complex and costlier than required.
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.
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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
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Question 2
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Question 3
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Question 5
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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 a reduced but ready-to-scale environment in the secondary Region. — Warm standby best aligns with an RTO of around 6 hours and an RPO of about 1 hour while avoiding the cost of always-on full capacity. In warm standby, the secondary Region typically keeps core components provisioned (for example, networking, configuration, and minimal compute/database capacity) so the system can become operational faster than pure backup/restore. You then scale up services as needed during a disaster. Why others are wrong: Backup and restore only offers low cost but often cannot meet an aggressive RTO because restoration and redeployment can take several hours. Pilot light runs the bare minimum and usually trades off additional recovery time for cost savings. Multi-site active-active would likely meet RTO easily, but it keeps production capacity running in both Regions, which is more than the business wants.
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.
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