PAS-C01 EBS Snapshots Practice Question
A company is designing a disaster recovery strategy for a critical application that runs on EC2 instances with data stored on EBS volumes. The application requires RPO of 15 minutes and RTO of 1 hour. Which TWO approaches meet these requirements?
⚠ Common exam trap
The PAS-C01 exam often tests the misconception that AWS Backup can support sub-hourly backup intervals, but the minimum is 1 hour, so candidates may incorrectly select Option B thinking it meets the 15-minute RPO. Additionally, candidates may overlook Option E because the term 'EBS Reboot' is ambiguous; however, this refers to AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (formerly CloudEndure), which provides continuous replication and automated failover to meet tight RPO/RTO requirements.
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 EBS Snapshots taken every 15 minutes and copy them to the DR region
EBS Snapshots can be taken every 15 minutes and copied across regions, enabling volume creation in the DR region with an RPO of 15 minutes and RTO under 1 hour if the EC2 instance is pre-provisioned. Using AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (which may be referred to as 'EBS Reboot' in this context) provides continuous replication and failover, meeting the RPO/RTO requirements. Options B, C, and D are incorrect: AWS Backup has a minimum 1-hour backup interval; hourly AMIs exceed the 15-minute RPO; and EBS Multi-Attach does not support cross-region failover.
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 EBS Snapshots taken every 15 minutes and copy them to the DR region
Why this is correct
Correct. EBS Snapshots can be taken every 15 minutes and copied to another region, meeting the RPO of 15 minutes. With pre-provisioned instances, RTO under 1 hour is achievable.
- ✗
Use AWS Backup with a backup plan that takes cross-region backups every 15 minutes
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. AWS Backup has a minimum backup interval of 1 hour, which exceeds the required 15-minute RPO.
- ✗
Use Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) backed by EBS snapshots, taken hourly
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. AMIs backed by EBS snapshots cannot be created more frequently than once per hour, exceeding the 15-minute RPO.
- ✗
Use EBS Multi-Attach volumes to allow the DR instance to access the same volumes
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. EBS Multi-Attach volumes are designed for single-AZ, high-availability scenarios, not cross-region disaster recovery.
- ✓
Use EBS Reboot (not Stop/Start) to move the instance to the DR region with replicated volumes
Why this is correct
Incorrect. 'EBS Reboot' is not a real AWS operation. There is no feature that uses a reboot to move instances to a DR region. The scenario described does not exist.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PAS-C01 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 PAS-C01 exam.