SOA-C02 Practice Question: Route 53 failover routing policy for…
A web application is deployed in us-east-1 (primary) and eu-west-1 (standby). Under normal conditions, all traffic should go to us-east-1. If the us-east-1 health check fails, traffic must automatically redirect to eu-west-1 within 30 to 60 seconds. What Route 53 configuration implements this?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse failover routing with latency or geolocation routing, assuming that Route 53 automatically considers health in those routing policies, but only failover routing explicitly supports active-passive failover with health checks.
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
✓
Create failover routing records for the domain: a Primary record pointing to us-east-1 with a Route 53 health check, and a Secondary record pointing to eu-west-1 with no health check
Route 53 failover routing records, combined with a health check on the primary record, automatically redirect traffic to the secondary (standby) record when the primary health check fails. The health check interval and failure threshold can be configured to detect failure within 30–60 seconds, meeting the requirement without manual intervention.
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 failover routing records for the domain: a Primary record pointing to us-east-1 with a Route 53 health check, and a Secondary record pointing to eu-west-1 with no health check
Why this is correct
When the health check on the Primary record fails for the configured number of consecutive intervals, Route 53 removes the Primary from DNS responses and serves the Secondary. DNS TTL on the records should be set low (60 seconds or less) to minimize client-side caching delay. The failover is automatic, with no manual intervention or Lambda functions required.
- ✗
Use weighted routing with 100 weight for us-east-1 and 0 weight for eu-west-1; update the weights via Lambda when a CloudWatch alarm fires
Why it's wrong here
Weighted routing with 0 weight for the secondary effectively removes it from rotation, but traffic continues to the primary even if it is unhealthy. Failover requires a manual or automated weight update via a Lambda triggered by an alarm, adding latency and operational complexity. Failover routing policy handles this automatically with no Lambda required.
- ✗
Enable Route 53 latency routing with records for both regions; Route 53 will automatically switch to eu-west-1 when us-east-1 becomes unavailable
Why it's wrong here
Latency routing selects the region that offers the lowest latency for the client, not the region that is healthy. If us-east-1 is unreachable, latency routing does not automatically exclude it — Route 53 may still return the us-east-1 record even if the endpoint is down, because latency routing has no concept of health-based exclusion without a health check.
- ✗
Configure Route 53 geolocation routing to send all US traffic to us-east-1 and all European traffic to eu-west-1
Why it's wrong here
Geolocation routing directs traffic based on the geographic origin of the client request, not based on endpoint health. A US user will always be sent to us-east-1 even if it is down, because geolocation routing does not monitor health. This does not implement an active-passive failover.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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