SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a disaster recovery (DR) strategy for a critical application. The application runs on EC2 instances in a single AWS Region. The company needs a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 2 hours and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 15 minutes. Which TWO strategies meet these requirements? (Choose TWO.)
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap is that candidates may assume Application Load Balancers can perform cross-Region load balancing, but ALBs are regional services and cannot forward traffic to targets in a different Region. For cross-Region failover, you must use DNS-based routing (e.g., Route 53) or a global load balancer like Global Accelerator. While managed databases like Aurora Global Database and DynamoDB global tables offer low RPO replication, the network tier must be designed correctly to achieve the required RTO and RPO.
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
✓
Use Amazon DynamoDB global tables for the database and deploy EC2 instances in a warm standby configuration in another Region
Amazon DynamoDB global tables provide automatic, asynchronous replication across multiple AWS Regions with an RPO of typically less than 1 second, easily meeting the 15-minute RPO. Combined with a warm standby configuration of EC2 instances in the secondary Region, you can quickly fail over within the 2-hour RTO using Route 53 or other DNS mechanisms. Option C is incorrect because Application Load Balancers (ALBs) are regional in scope and do not support cross-Region load balancing. ALB cannot directly route traffic to targets in another Region, so the described architecture would not achieve cross-Region failover as intended. Options A and B involve replication mechanisms (S3 CRR and EBS snapshots) that cannot guarantee the 15-minute RPO due to asynchronous delays and manual recovery steps. Option E describes an Active-Passive configuration within the same Region, which does not provide disaster recovery across Regions.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Use S3 Cross-Region Replication for application data and launch EC2 instances from AMIs copied to the secondary Region
Why it's wrong here
S3 Cross-Region Replication is asynchronous and does not guarantee a 15-minute RPO. Additionally, launching EC2 instances from AMIs copied to the secondary Region involves manual steps, likely exceeding the 2-hour RTO.
- ✗
Take hourly snapshots of EBS volumes and copy them to another Region; use AWS CloudFormation to launch instances from the snapshots
Why it's wrong here
Hourly EBS snapshots provide an RPO of at least 1 hour, which does not meet the 15-minute requirement. Copying snapshots to another Region and launching instances via CloudFormation adds recovery time, making the RTO difficult to achieve.
- ✗
Use Amazon Aurora Global Database for the database and deploy EC2 instances with an Application Load Balancer that has cross-Region load balancing enabled
Why it's wrong here
While Amazon Aurora Global Database meets the RPO and RTO for the database tier, an Application Load Balancer cannot perform cross-Region load balancing. ALBs are Regional services and cannot route traffic to EC2 instances in a different Region, so this architecture does not achieve cross-Region failover for the application tier.
- ✓
Use Amazon DynamoDB global tables for the database and deploy EC2 instances in a warm standby configuration in another Region
Why this is correct
Amazon DynamoDB global tables replicate data across Regions with an RPO of seconds, meeting the 15-minute RPO. A warm standby setup with EC2 instances in the secondary Region, combined with Route 53 DNS failover, can achieve the 2-hour RTO. This strategy is correct.
- ✗
Configure an Active-Passive failover using Route 53 with health checks within the same Region
Why it's wrong here
An Active-Passive failover within the same Region does not provide disaster recovery across Regions. It protects only against instance-level failures, not Regional outages.
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
Related to this question
About these practice questions
This SAP-C02 question is part of Courseiva's 1,660-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
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.