SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a new cloud-native application that will be deployed across multiple AWS Regions for high availability. The application uses Amazon Aurora Global Database for its primary data store. The company needs to ensure that in the event of a regional failure, the secondary region can be promoted to primary with minimal data loss. Which configuration should be used?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse cross-region read replicas (which have higher replication lag and require manual promotion) with Aurora Global Database's managed failover (which provides sub-second RPO and automated promotion), leading them to choose option D instead of 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
✓
Use Aurora Global Database with one primary region and one secondary region. Enable managed failover with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 1 second.
Amazon Aurora Global Database is specifically designed for cross-region disaster recovery with a typical RPO of 1 second and RTO of less than 1 minute when managed failover is enabled. It uses a storage-based replication layer that replicates data from the primary to secondary regions with minimal latency, ensuring that in a regional failure, the secondary region can be promoted to primary with very little 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.
- ✗
Use Aurora Serverless v2 with data replication across regions using Database Migration Service (DMS).
Why it's wrong here
Aurora Serverless v2 does not support cross-region replication natively; DMS adds complexity and latency.
- ✗
Deploy Aurora Multi-AZ in the primary region and use a secondary region as a warm standby.
Why it's wrong here
Multi-AZ is within a single region; cross-region failover requires Aurora Global Database.
- ✓
Use Aurora Global Database with one primary region and one secondary region. Enable managed failover with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 1 second.
Why this is correct
Aurora Global Database provides cross-region replication with low RPO and managed failover.
- ✗
Configure Aurora Cross-Region Read Replicas and use Amazon Route 53 for DNS failover.
Why it's wrong here
Cross-Region Read Replicas have higher RPO (minutes) and require manual promotion.
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
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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.