SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a multi-region disaster recovery solution for a stateless web application running on Amazon ECS Fargate. The application uses an Application Load Balancer and stores session data in Amazon ElastiCache for Redis. The company needs to achieve an RPO of 15 minutes and an RTO of 30 minutes. What is the MOST cost-effective design that meets these requirements?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently assume cross-Region replication for ElastiCache requires manual snapshot/restore or custom replication, but ElastiCache Global Datastore provides managed, low-latency replication that meets strict RPOs, and running zero tasks in the secondary region (Option A) prevents failover from working because the ALB has no healthy targets.
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 a second ECS cluster and ALB in the secondary region with a scaled-down number of tasks. Use ElastiCache Global Datastore for Redis to replicate session data. Use Route 53 health checks to fail over.
It uses ElastiCache Global Datastore for Redis, which provides cross-Region replication with sub-minute RPO, meeting the 15-minute RPO requirement. The scaled-down ECS tasks in the secondary region can be quickly scaled up to achieve the 30-minute RTO, and Route 53 health checks enable automated failover. This design minimizes cost by running only minimal capacity in the secondary region until failover occurs.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Deploy a second ECS cluster and ALB in the secondary region with no tasks. Use cross-Region replication for ElastiCache. Use Route 53 to fail over after scaling up tasks.
Why it's wrong here
Scaling up tasks from zero will exceed RTO.
- ✓
Deploy a second ECS cluster and ALB in the secondary region with a scaled-down number of tasks. Use ElastiCache Global Datastore for Redis to replicate session data. Use Route 53 health checks to fail over.
Why this is correct
Correct: Warm standby with Global Datastore meets RPO and RTO.
- ✗
Use a multi-region ECS service with Service Connect and Route 53 latency-based routing. Keep equal capacity in both regions.
Why it's wrong here
Active-active is more expensive than needed for RTO 30 min.
- ✗
Use pilot light by replicating ECS task definitions and copying AMIs to the secondary region. Use ElastiCache snapshot and restore. Fail over with Route 53.
Why it's wrong here
Snapshot restore RPO is too high; pilot light not best for stateless app.
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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.