SOA-C02 Reliability and Business Continuity Practice Question
A company runs a critical application on AWS Lambda functions. The functions are invoked by an API Gateway endpoint. The SysOps administrator needs to ensure that the application continues to work if an entire AWS Region becomes unavailable. What should the administrator do?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse high-availability features like Global Accelerator or provisioned concurrency with true disaster recovery across Regions, failing to recognize that only Route 53 failover routing provides the DNS-level traffic redirection needed when an entire Region becomes unavailable.
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
✓
Deploy the same API Gateway and Lambda setup in a second Region and use Route 53 with failover routing.
Deploying the same API Gateway and Lambda setup in a second AWS Region and using Route 53 with failover routing creates an active-passive disaster recovery architecture. Route 53 health checks monitor the primary Region's endpoint, and if it becomes unhealthy (e.g., due to a regional outage), DNS failover automatically routes traffic to the secondary Region, ensuring continuous operation of the application.
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 AWS Global Accelerator to route traffic to the closest Region.
Why it's wrong here
AWS Global Accelerator uses anycast static IP addresses to direct traffic to the closest healthy endpoint, typically an Application Load Balancer or Network Load Balancer. However, it does not automatically fail over to another Region if the primary endpoint is down unless you explicitly configure multiple accelerators and health checks, and it is not a substitute for a cross-Region active-passive architecture for Lambda and API Gateway.
- ✗
Configure Lambda functions with provisioned concurrency in multiple Regions.
Why it's wrong here
Provisioned concurrency only pre-initializes a number of Lambda runtime environments to eliminate cold starts within a single Region. Configuring it in multiple Regions does not by itself create a multi-Region application, because there is no routing mechanism to send traffic to the secondary Region's function, nor does it handle API Gateway redirection if the primary Region fails.
- ✗
Use Lambda@Edge to run the functions at edge locations.
Why it's wrong here
Lambda@Edge runs custom logic at CloudFront edge locations, but it is designed for lightweight request/response modification, not for hosting the full API Gateway and Lambda application. Moreover, Lambda@Edge functions are still tied to a specific origin Region, and CloudFront does not provide automatic failover between independently deployed API Gateway and Lambda stacks in different Regions.
- ✓
Deploy the same API Gateway and Lambda setup in a second Region and use Route 53 with failover routing.
Why this is correct
Deploying an identical API Gateway and Lambda setup in a second Region and using Route 53 failover routing with health checks on the primary endpoint provides an active-passive disaster recovery pattern. When the health check fails, Route 53 automatically returns the secondary Region's IP address, directing clients to the standby stack. This approach ensures cross-Region availability and is the standard solution for making a Lambda-based critical application resilient to an entire Region outage.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
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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.