SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a new application that requires a relational database with automated backups and multi-AZ redundancy. The database workload is predictable with occasional read replicas for reporting. Which AWS service should be used?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse Amazon Redshift's columnar storage and read replica-like features (e.g., concurrency scaling) with a relational database, but Redshift is not designed for transactional workloads or automated Multi-AZ failover.
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
✓
Amazon RDS
Amazon RDS is the correct choice because it provides managed relational databases (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server) with built-in automated backups and Multi-AZ redundancy for high availability. The workload is predictable and requires occasional read replicas for reporting, both of which are natively supported by RDS without the need for complex configuration.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Amazon RDS
Why this is correct
Amazon RDS provides automated backups and Multi-AZ standby replication with automatic failover, satisfying both redundancy requirements. Read replicas offload reporting queries from the primary, matching the predictable workload with occasional reporting reads described in the scenario.
- ✗
Amazon Redshift
Why it's wrong here
Redshift is a columnar analytics warehouse, not an OLTP relational engine, so it lacks the row-level transactional workload and standard relational read replicas described. It is tempting because it is a managed AWS database, and it would be correct for large-scale reporting and data warehousing.
- ✗
Amazon DynamoDB
Why it's wrong here
DynamoDB is a NoSQL key-value store without relational schemas, SQL joins, or native read replicas, so it cannot satisfy the relational requirement. It is tempting because it is fully managed with multi-AZ durability, and it would be correct for high-scale key-value access at single-digit millisecond latency.
- ✗
Amazon ElastiCache
Why it's wrong here
ElastiCache is an in-memory cache, not a durable relational database, so it cannot serve as the primary store with automated backups and read replicas. It is tempting because it is managed and multi-AZ capable, and it would be correct for offloading read-heavy query load from a database.
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