SAA-C03 Practice Question: DynamoDB Global Tables provides managed…
A company needs to replicate a DynamoDB table to three AWS regions so that users in each region can read and write to a local copy with the lowest possible latency. Changes must propagate to all regions within seconds. Which solution should a solutions architect implement?
⚠ Common exam trap
DynamoDB Streams captures item-level changes and can be processed by Lambda to replicate to other regions — this is a valid DIY approach. But when the question asks for multi-region multi-active replication with minimal complexity, Global Tables is the correct answer. Streams is the mechanism; Global Tables is the managed service. Always choose the managed service over DIY for SAA-C03.
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
✓
Configure DynamoDB Global Tables with replica tables in each of the three regions
DynamoDB Global Tables provide multi-region, multi-active (multi-master) replication. Each region maintains a full replica of the table, and applications can read and write to any region with local latency. Changes propagate to all other regions typically within one second. DynamoDB Streams + Lambda is the underlying mechanism that Global Tables uses internally, but building a custom replication pipeline adds significant operational complexity. Global Tables is the managed, purpose-built solution requiring no custom code.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Enable DynamoDB Streams and use Lambda functions to replicate changes to tables in the other two regions
Why it's wrong here
DynamoDB Streams + Lambda replication is functionally possible for copying changes between regions, but it is a custom, bespoke solution that forces you to handle item ordering, duplicate events, retries, and partial failures in your own application code. Unlike the managed replication in Global Tables, this pattern does not provide automatic conflict resolution or exactly-once semantics and requires you to operate and scale the Lambda functions across three regions. Global Tables already uses DynamoDB Streams internally, so choosing this option is essentially reimplementing an AWS service without its guarantees and is therefore operationally complex and less reliable.
- ✓
Configure DynamoDB Global Tables with replica tables in each of the three regions
Why this is correct
DynamoDB Global Tables is the correct solution because it provides fully managed, multi-region, multi-active replication with submeter-second propagation between the three chosen replica tables. With Global Tables, writes to any replica are accepted and automatically propagated to all others, and built-in conflict resolution using last-writer-wins resolves concurrent updates without any custom code or operational overhead. This gives you active-active reads and writes in all three regions, which exactly matches the requirement for low-latency multi-region access.
- ✗
Create DynamoDB read replicas in each region and use the primary table for all writes
Why it's wrong here
DynamoDB does not support read-only replica instances the way Amazon RDS does; you cannot create a separate read-only copy of a table that serves reads while the primary continues to handle all writes. Even if you tried to implement this pattern manually, you would still need to replicate write data into the other regions, and the primary table would remain a single point of contention for writes, making the design neither active-active nor fully resilient. Global Tables instead creates full replica tables that support both reads and writes in each region, which is the actual DynamoDB-native pattern.
- ✗
Use Amazon S3 cross-region replication to back up DynamoDB exports to each region
Why it's wrong here
S3 cross-region replication copies objects from one S3 bucket to another, not DynamoDB table data, and DynamoDB exports to S3 are point-in-time batch snapshots rather than continuous, transactional change streams. Relying on a periodic S3 export pipeline means your data would be stale — updates are not reflected at the speed of the application — and S3 objects cannot serve as a live, queryable DynamoDB table in another region. This option is a backup/analytics strategy, not a multi-region active database architecture, so it fails the real-time data access requirement.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
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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.