SAA-C03 Design Resilient Architectures Practice Question
A ticket booking system uses Aurora MySQL. The company wants fast cross-Region disaster recovery with low RPO. Which architecture should be considered? The architecture review board prefers a managed AWS-native control.
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse cross-Region read replicas (which have higher RPO and require manual promotion) with Aurora Global Database, or assume that any caching layer like ElastiCache can substitute for database DR, when in fact only Aurora Global Database provides the required low RPO and managed failover.
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
✓
Aurora Global Database
Aurora Global Database is the correct choice because it provides a managed, cross-Region disaster recovery solution with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of typically less than 1 second, using storage-based replication that does not impact database performance. This meets the requirement for fast failover and low data loss, while being fully AWS-native and controlled by the architecture review board.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Aurora Global Database
Why this is correct
Aurora Global Database is the correct answer because it replicates MySQL data at the storage layer to up to five secondary AWS Regions with typical replication latency under one second. This enables a promoted secondary cluster to become the primary in minutes, yielding a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of roughly 1–2 minutes and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) measured in seconds. Unlike snapshot-based backups, this is continuous, automatic replication that keeps the ticket booking system’s data nearly current in the disaster recovery Region, making it the only option that satisfies fast DR while preserving data consistency at scale.
- ✗
A single-AZ Aurora cluster
Why it's wrong here
A single-AZ Aurora cluster, even with Aurora's multiple storage nodes, only spans Availability Zones within one AWS Region; it does not replicate any data to another Region. While it can provide high availability by creating Aurora Replicas in different AZs, those replicas share the same regional storage and failover is contained to that Region. If the entire Region suffers a disaster, the single-AZ cluster becomes unreachable and data is not recoverable elsewhere, so it fundamentally lacks the cross-Region DR capability required for this scenario.
- ✗
An ElastiCache Redis replica
Why it's wrong here
ElastiCache Redis is an in-memory data store used to cache frequent reads or session data, not a database replication mechanism for Aurora. It does not persist transactional records from the ticket booking system, nor does it contain the underlying Aurora database files; therefore, it cannot be promoted to a primary database or used to restore lost data. Redis replication merely maintains copies of the cache across nodes for cache availability, which is separate from and cannot substitute for Aurora's cross-Region disaster recovery.
- ✗
Manual snapshots copied monthly
Why it's wrong here
Manual snapshots copied monthly produce an RPO of up to 30 days because they only capture a point-in-time state that is renewed monthly. To recover, you would need to restore a new Aurora cluster from the freshest snapshot, which takes substantial time for large databases and can lose every transaction made since that snapshot. This approach fails the 'fast' requirement of the ticket booking system, as RTO would be measured in hours or longer, and RPO would be unacceptably high for a production system that needs continuous availability.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
Go deeper
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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.