SAP-C02 Elastic Disaster Recovery (AWS DRS) Practice Question
A company is migrating a critical application to AWS and needs to ensure it meets a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 15 minutes and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 5 minutes. The application runs on EC2 with an EBS volume. Which configuration should the company use?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap is assuming that Multi-AZ synchronous replication is available for standard EC2 instances with EBS volumes. It is not—Multi-AZ is specific to managed database services like RDS. For EC2 disaster recovery, AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery is the correct service.
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
✓
EC2 instance with Elastic Disaster Recovery service.
AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (AWS DRS) provides continuous replication with near-zero RPO (typically seconds) and can meet an RTO of minutes. For an EC2 instance with an EBS volume, DRS replicates the entire server and enables rapid recovery in the same AWS Region or another Region, achieving the required 15-minute RTO and 5-minute RPO. Option A is incorrect because standard EC2 instances do not support synchronous replication between two instances—Multi-AZ is a feature of managed services like RDS, not for general EC2/EBS. Option B is wrong because EBS snapshots taken every 5 minutes achieve a 5-minute RPO, but restoring from a snapshot takes longer than 15 minutes, failing the RTO. Option C is wrong because an Auto Scaling group with warm standby does not guarantee stateful synchronous replication, and recovery time may exceed 15 minutes without additional orchestration.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Multi-AZ deployment with synchronous replication between two instances.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. Multi-AZ deployment with synchronous replication is not available for EC2 instances with EBS volumes; it is a feature of managed database services like RDS.
- ✗
Single EC2 instance with EBS snapshots every 5 minutes.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. EBS snapshots every 5 minutes achieve the RPO but restoring an instance from a snapshot typically takes longer than 15 minutes, failing the RTO.
- ✗
Two EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group with a warm standby.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. Auto Scaling group with warm standby does not guarantee synchronous replication and may require additional time to promote the standby instance, potentially exceeding the RTO.
- ✓
EC2 instance with Elastic Disaster Recovery service.
Why this is correct
Correct. AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery provides continuous replication with low RPO and fast recovery, meeting the 15-minute RTO and 5-minute RPO requirements.
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