SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a disaster recovery (DR) solution for a critical application running on Amazon EC2 instances in a single AWS Region. The DR site will be in a different Region. The application data is stored in an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance with Multi-AZ enabled. The Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is 15 minutes, and the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is 2 hours. Which strategy meets these requirements MOST cost-effectively?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates may over-engineer the solution by choosing Aurora Global Database (Option B) for its managed replication, overlooking that a cross-Region read replica for RDS MySQL is sufficient and more cost-effective for the given RPO/RTO, or they may underestimate the RPO gap of snapshot-based approaches (Options A and C).
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 a cross-Region read replica for the RDS MySQL DB instance. In the DR event, promote the read replica to a standalone instance.
The most cost-effective strategy because a cross-Region read replica for RDS MySQL allows continuous replication with minimal overhead, achieving an RPO of seconds to minutes and an RTO of minutes (promotion time). It avoids the cost of a full Aurora Global Database or the RPO gap from daily snapshots, meeting the 15-minute RPO and 2-hour RTO requirements at lower cost.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Take daily automated snapshots of the RDS DB instance and copy them to the DR Region. In the DR Region, restore the DB instance from the latest snapshot.
Why it's wrong here
Daily snapshots provide RPO of up to 24 hours, exceeding 15 minutes.
- ✗
Use Amazon Aurora Global Database to replicate data across Regions.
Why it's wrong here
Aurora Global Database is for Aurora, not RDS MySQL, and is more expensive.
- ✗
Use AWS Backup to copy backups to the DR Region and set up EC2 Image Builder for application recovery.
Why it's wrong here
AWS Backup for RDS provides point-in-time recovery but RTO may be longer; Image Builder is for AMIs, not database.
- ✓
Configure a cross-Region read replica for the RDS MySQL DB instance. In the DR event, promote the read replica to a standalone instance.
Why this is correct
Cross-Region read replicas provide low RPO (seconds) and fast RTO (minutes).
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SAP-C02 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 SAP-C02 exam.