SAP-C02 Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions Practice Question
A financial services company runs a critical application on EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group across multiple Availability Zones. They need to ensure that in the event of a single AZ failure, the application remains available with no data loss. The application uses EBS volumes for persistent storage. What should a solutions architect recommend?
⚠ Common exam trap
EBS multi-attach volumes are often mistaken as a cross-AZ solution, but they only work within a single AZ. For cross-AZ high availability with no data loss, consider using Amazon EFS or a replication mechanism.
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 EFS instead of EBS volumes.
Amazon EFS is a regional, fully managed file system that automatically replicates data across multiple Availability Zones, providing high availability and durability. This ensures no data loss during a single AZ failure. Option A is incorrect because periodic snapshots introduce a recovery point objective (RPO) that may result in data loss. Option C is incorrect because EBS volumes are tied to a single AZ and cannot be attached to instances in another AZ. Option D is incorrect because EBS multi-attach volumes only allow attachment within the same AZ, not across different AZs, thus cannot provide cross-AZ high availability.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Take periodic EBS snapshots and restore in another AZ.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. Periodic EBS snapshots are not real-time and cannot guarantee zero data loss; there is always a window of potential data loss between snapshots.
- ✓
Use Amazon EFS instead of EBS volumes.
Why this is correct
Correct. Amazon EFS provides a regional file system that is automatically replicated across multiple AZs, ensuring availability and no data loss during a single AZ failure.
- ✗
Use an EBS volume in one AZ and attach it to instances in another AZ.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. EBS volumes are zone-bound; they cannot be attached to instances in a different Availability Zone.
- ✗
Use an EBS multi-attach volume with a cluster-aware file system.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. EBS multi-attach volumes only support attachment within the same Availability Zone, not across different AZs, so they do not provide high availability across AZs.
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