SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a disaster recovery strategy for a production database running on Amazon RDS for MySQL. The RTO is 15 minutes and RPO is 1 hour. Which TWO solutions meet these requirements? (Choose two.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse Multi-AZ (synchronous, same-Region) with cross-Region read replicas (asynchronous, cross-Region), or assume manual snapshots can meet tight RTO/RPO without considering restore time and operational complexity.
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
✓
Deploy Multi-AZ RDS instance and enable automatic failover
Multi-AZ RDS for MySQL provides automatic synchronous standby replication to a different Availability Zone, enabling automatic failover within minutes (typically 1-2 minutes) without data loss. This meets the 15-minute RTO and 1-hour RPO, as failover is automated and synchronous replication ensures zero data loss.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Export the database to Amazon S3 using AWS DMS and import in another Region
Why it's wrong here
High RTO; takes longer than 15 minutes.
- ✓
Deploy Multi-AZ RDS instance and enable automatic failover
Why this is correct
Multi-AZ provides synchronous replication, RPO ~seconds, RTO ~minutes.
- ✗
Use automated backups with point-in-time recovery in the same Region
Why it's wrong here
PITR restores take longer than 15 minutes and do not protect against regional failure.
- ✗
Take manual snapshots every hour and restore in another Region
Why it's wrong here
RPO could be up to 1 hour, but restore time exceeds 15 minutes.
- ✓
Create a cross-Region read replica and promote it during disaster
Why this is correct
Asynchronous replication with RPO < 1 hour and promotion within minutes.
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