SOA-C02 Reliability and Business Continuity Practice Question
A company is designing a disaster recovery plan for its on-premises database. They need to replicate the database to AWS with low latency. Which AWS service should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse network connectivity services (like Direct Connect) or storage replication (like S3 CRR or Storage Gateway) with database-level replication, which requires transaction-consistent change capture and application.
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
✓
AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) with ongoing replication.
AWS DMS with ongoing replication (change data capture, CDC) is the correct choice because it can continuously replicate changes from an on-premises database to a target database in AWS with low latency, supporting heterogeneous and homogeneous migrations. This meets the requirement for a disaster recovery plan that keeps the AWS copy nearly synchronized with the on-premises source.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Amazon S3 with Cross-Region Replication.
Why it's wrong here
Amazon S3 with Cross-Region Replication cannot serve as a database disaster recovery mechanism because S3 is an object storage service, not a transactional database engine. While CRR asynchronously copies objects to a destination bucket in another AWS Region, it does not understand database schemas, transactions, or change data capture streams. It cannot replicate an application-consistent database state or preserve relational constraints, so it would fail to provide usable database durability for a DR plan.
- ✗
AWS Storage Gateway with volume gateway.
Why it's wrong here
AWS Storage Gateway with volume gateway provides on-premises applications with block-based storage volumes that are asynchronously backed up to Amazon S3 as EBS snapshots. However, a volume gateway is designed for backup and file/block-level storage, not for replicating live database transactions or maintaining a continuously synchronized secondary database. At best, it can offer crash-consistent snapshots, which may result in data loss and do not satisfy a database-specific RPO/RTO requirement for ongoing replication.
- ✓
AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) with ongoing replication.
Why this is correct
AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) with ongoing replication is the correct choice because DMS can perform continuous change data capture (CDC) from the source database and apply those changes to a target Amazon RDS instance in another Region. This enables a near-real-time replica of the database with low RPO, supporting disaster recovery by keeping the target transactionally consistent. DMS supports both homogeneous and heterogeneous migrations, and ongoing replication is a key feature for DR scenarios when native replication options are not available.
- ✗
AWS Direct Connect to establish a dedicated network connection.
Why it's wrong here
AWS Direct Connect establishes a dedicated, private network connection between a company's data center and AWS, offering lower latency and more consistent bandwidth than internet-based connections. While it can improve network reliability for database traffic or facilitate remote access to AWS resources, it does not itself perform any database replication or data synchronization. Direct Connect is merely a connectivity component; it must be paired with a replication mechanism like DMS or native database mirroring, so it does not answer the DR replication requirement.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SOA-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 SOA-C02 exam.