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SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question

A company is designing a new disaster recovery solution for a critical application that runs on Amazon EC2 with an Amazon RDS for MySQL database. The Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is 15 minutes and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is 1 hour. Which TWO strategies meet these requirements? (Choose TWO.)

⚠ Common exam trap

Many candidates confuse cross-region read replicas (which can meet the RPO/RTO if properly configured and promoted quickly) with cross-region snapshots (which are too slow), or they mistakenly think Multi-AZ provides cross-region DR when it only protects against AZ failures within a single region.

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 Aurora Global Database for the database tier.

Amazon Aurora Global Database supports cross-region replication with typical RPO of less than 1 second and RTO of less than 1 minute, easily meeting the 15-minute RTO and 1-hour RPO. The primary region writes are asynchronously replicated to up to five secondary regions, and in a disaster, you can promote a secondary region to full read/write in under a minute.

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 Amazon Aurora Global Database for the database tier.

    Why this is correct

    Aurora Global Database provides low RPO/RTO cross-region.

  • ✓

    Use a cross-region read replica for RDS and promote it during disaster.

    Why this is correct

    Promoting a read replica can be done within minutes and RPO is seconds to minutes.

  • ✗

    Use EC2 AMI copy to another region and launch instances from the AMI.

    Why it's wrong here

    AMI copy and instance launch can exceed 15 minutes.

  • ✗

    Use RDS cross-region snapshots and restore in the DR region.

    Why it's wrong here

    Snapshot restore takes longer than 15 minutes.

  • ✗

    Configure RDS Multi-AZ in the primary region.

    Why it's wrong here

    Multi-AZ is for HA within a region, not DR.

About these practice questions

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Same concept, more angles

1 more way this is tested on SAP-C02

These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.

Variation 1. A company is designing a disaster recovery solution for a critical application that runs on Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. The application requires an RPO of 5 minutes and an RTO of 15 minutes. The primary database is in us-east-1. The recovery Region is us-west-2. Which TWO solutions meet these requirements? (Choose TWO.)

hard
  • A.Take manual snapshots periodically and copy them to us-west-2.
  • ✓ B.Configure a cross-Region read replica for the RDS PostgreSQL instance in us-west-2.
  • ✓ C.Enable Multi-AZ deployment in us-east-1 and use a read replica in us-west-2.
  • D.Use Amazon Aurora Global Database with a secondary cluster in us-west-2.
  • E.Use automated backups with cross-Region copy to us-west-2.

Why B: Both Option B and Option C meet the requirements. Option B: A cross-Region read replica for RDS PostgreSQL can be promoted to a standalone primary in minutes, satisfying the 15-minute RTO, and asynchronous replication typically has lag well under 5 minutes, meeting the 5-minute RPO. Option C: Enabling Multi-AZ ensures high availability within the primary region, but the key component for DR is the read replica in us-west-2. The combination does not prevent meeting the RPO/RTO; the read replica can be promoted quickly. Note that Multi-AZ alone does not provide cross-region DR, but when combined with a cross-Region read replica, it still meets the requirements. Option A: Manual snapshots cannot achieve 5-minute RPO due to snapshot frequency and restore times. Option D: Aurora Global Database is not supported for RDS PostgreSQL; it is for Aurora only. Option E: Automated backups provide daily snapshots, not sub-minute RPO, and cross-region copy adds delay, so RTO is too long.

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.