SOA-C02 Deployment, Provisioning, and Automation Practice Question

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

• ✓

  Create a cross-Region read replica of the primary RDS instance in the secondary Region

  Why this is correct

  Amazon RDS cross-Region read replicas use asynchronous replication to continuously copy data from the primary MySQL instance to a read-only instance in a second AWS Region. In a disaster, you can promote the replica to become a standalone primary, providing a low RPO and RTO without custom scripts or manual database dumps. This is the managed, native, and cost-effective mechanism for cross-Region disaster recovery of RDS.

• ✗

  Use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) with ongoing replication

  Why it's wrong here

  AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) with ongoing replication is not the most automated or cost-effective solution for cross-Region disaster recovery of Amazon RDS for MySQL. DMS primarily facilitates database migrations, including heterogeneous ones, or replicates data to different targets like data warehouses, requiring more operational overhead for a robust DR setup than native RDS features. This option is tempting because DMS does offer ongoing replication, making it suitable for scenarios such as migrating an on-premises database to RDS with minimal downtime, or replicating data from RDS to a data lake for analytics.

• ✗

  Set up a cron job on an EC2 instance to export the database and import it into the secondary Region

  Why it's wrong here

  Scheduling a cron job on an EC2 instance to export the database and import it into the secondary Region introduces significant operational overhead and is not a managed or continuous replication solution. Each scheduled run would produce a point-in-time snapshot, meaning the secondary database could be stale by minutes or hours depending on the cron interval, and any failure in the export, transfer, or import process would require manual intervention. This approach also incurs the cost and maintenance of an EC2 instance and does not guarantee data consistency, making it unsuitable for meeting the DR requirement reliably.

• ✗

  Enable Multi-AZ on the primary RDS instance and configure a read replica in the secondary Region

  Why it's wrong here

  Enabling Multi-AZ on the primary RDS instance provides synchronous replication to a standby in a different Availability Zone within the same Region, which protects against single-AZ failures but does not replicate data across Regions. The separate action of creating a cross-Region read replica already fulfills the disaster recovery need; Multi-AZ is unnecessary for this requirement and simply adds extra cost and complexity without improving cross-Region durability. You can create a cross-Region read replica regardless of whether Multi-AZ is enabled, so this option is not the correct solution for the stated DR goal.

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