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SAA-C03 Design Resilient Architectures Practice Question

Exhibit

Amazon RDS configuration:
- Engine: MySQL
- Deployment: Single-AZ
- Backup retention: 7 days
- Application connection string: db-prod.cluster-abcdefghijkl.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com

Operations note:
- During maintenance, the database endpoint stayed reachable only after a manual restore from snapshot.

Based on the exhibit, the database must fail over automatically if the primary Availability Zone goes down. Which solution should the architect choose?

⚠ Common exam trap

Watch out — candidates often confuse read replicas (which are asynchronous and require manual promotion) with Multi-AZ deployments (which provide automatic synchronous failover), often selecting a read replica in the same AZ because they think it offers high availability without understanding the fundamental replication mode difference.

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

✓

Convert the database to a Multi-AZ RDS deployment.

A Multi-AZ RDS deployment automatically provisions and maintains a synchronous standby replica in a different Availability Zone. If the primary AZ fails, Amazon RDS automatically fails over to the standby, typically within 60–120 seconds, without requiring manual intervention or changes to the application connection string.

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 a read replica in the same Availability Zone as the primary database.

    Why it's wrong here

    A read replica is an asynchronous, independent copy of the database intended for read scaling, not availability. Because replication is asynchronous, the replica may lag behind the primary and cannot guarantee zero data loss; furthermore, promoting it is a manual operation that changes the endpoint. Placing it in the same AZ also provides no protection against an AZ failure, and RDS does not automatically switch traffic to a read replica.

  • ✓

    Convert the database to a Multi-AZ RDS deployment.

    Why this is correct

    A Multi-AZ RDS deployment keeps a synchronous standby in another Availability Zone and automatically fails over when the primary fails. This matches the requirement for minimal manual intervention and preserves the same database endpoint, so the application does not need connection string changes. It is the standard AWS choice for resilient relational databases.

  • ✗

    Increase the backup retention period to 35 days.

    Why it's wrong here

    Increasing the backup retention period extends your ability to perform point-in-time recovery, but backups are snapshots taken at intervals; they do not create a hot standby. During a database outage, you would have to manually restore the database from a backup or PITR, which takes minutes and results in the loss of any transactions committed after the last backup. This is a disaster recovery strategy, not automatic failover, and the restored instance would have a different endpoint.

  • ✗

    Move the database to an EC2 instance with an attached EBS volume.

    Why it's wrong here

    Running the database on an EC2 instance with an attached EBS volume gives you full control but places the burden of high availability on you. An EBS volume is tied to a single Availability Zone, so an AZ failure takes the instance and its data down together. To achieve automatic failover you would need to build and manage your own replication, monitoring, and failover orchestration—complex, error-prone work that RDS Multi-AZ provides as a managed service with a single endpoint.

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JA

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.