Question 1mediummultiple choice
Full question →mediummultiple choiceObjective-mapped
A company runs a production Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance in a single Availability Zone (AZ). The SysOps administrator needs to improve database availability so that in the event of a database failure or AZ outage, a standby instance is automatically promoted with minimal downtime. Which configuration should the administrator enable?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Good practice is not just finding the correct option. The wrong answers often show the exact trap the exam wants you to fall into.
A
Distractor review
Enable automated backups with a retention period of 35 days.
Automated backups allow point-in-time recovery but do not provide automatic failover. Restoring from a backup takes much longer than the failover provided by Multi-AZ.
B
Distractor review
Create a read replica in another Availability Zone.
A read replica is for offloading read traffic and does not automatically failover. You could manually promote it to a standalone instance, but that is not automatic and introduces downtime.
C
Best answer
Enable Multi-AZ deployment on the DB instance.
Multi-AZ deployment creates a standby in a different AZ with synchronous replication. AWS handles automatic failover, ensuring high availability with minimal disruption.
D
Distractor review
Schedule manual snapshots to be taken every hour and restore from the latest snapshot when needed.
Manual snapshots are for backup and disaster recovery, but restoring a snapshot is a manual process that can take significant time and result in data loss. It does not provide automatic failover.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
Many certification questions include familiar terms but test a specific constraint. Read the exact wording before choosing an answer that is generally true but wrong for this case.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
This question should be treated as a scenario, not a definition check. Identify the problem, the constraint and the best action. Then compare each option against those facts.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
- Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
- Use explanations to understand the rule behind the answer.
TExam Day Tips
- Underline the problem statement mentally.
- Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
- Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Related practice questions
Related SOA-C02 practice-question pages
Use these pages to review the topic behind this question. This is how one missed question becomes focused revision.
More questions from this exam
Keep practising from the same exam bank, or move into a focused topic page if this question exposed a weak area.
Question 1
A company uses Amazon CloudFront to deliver content to a global audience. The origin is an Application Load Balancer in us-east-1. The SysOps administrator wants to reduce costs by minimizing the number of requests that reach the origin server. Which action should the administrator take?
Question 2
A company runs a batch processing application on Amazon EC2 that runs for 2 hours every night. The workload can tolerate interruptions. Which EC2 purchasing option provides the lowest cost for this use case?
Question 3
A SysOps administrator needs to monitor the CPU utilization of an Amazon RDS DB instance and receive an alarm when CPU utilization exceeds 80% for 5 consecutive minutes. Which AWS service should be used to create this alarm?
Question 4
A company runs a critical web application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application uses session stickiness (sticky sessions) to maintain user sessions. The SysOps administrator notices that when instances are replaced during a scale-in or failure event, users lose their session data. The administrator needs to preserve session data across instance failures without losing stickiness benefits. What should the administrator do?
Question 5
A company runs a production web application on a single Amazon EC2 instance. The application experiences a predictable and steady workload 24/7. The SysOps administrator wants to minimize compute costs for this instance while ensuring it remains available during the expected workload. Which EC2 purchasing option should the administrator use?
Question 6
A company has a VPC with public and private subnets. The private subnets host application servers that need to make outbound HTTPS connections to the internet. The SysOps administrator must implement a solution that provides outbound internet connectivity while preventing inbound connections from the internet. Additionally, the solution must allow the company to control which domains the application servers can access. Which solution should the administrator implement?
FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this SOA-C02 question test?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Enable Multi-AZ deployment on the DB instance. — Multi-AZ deployment for Amazon RDS automatically provisions and maintains a synchronous standby replica in a different AZ. If the primary instance fails, Amazon RDS automatically fails over to the standby, typically within 60 seconds. A Read Replica is for read scaling and requires manual promotion for disaster recovery, not automatic failover. Automated backups are for point-in-time recovery, not failover. Manual snapshots are for backup, not availability.
What should I do if I get this SOA-C02 question wrong?
Then try more questions from the same exam bank and focus on understanding why the wrong options are tempting.
Discussion
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