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CCSP Practice Question: Is designing a cloud application that must remain…
An organization is designing a cloud application that must remain available even if an entire AWS availability zone fails. Which architecture pattern should they implement?
⚠ Common exam trap
ISC2 often tests the distinction between surviving an AZ failure versus a region failure, and the trap here is that candidates may overcomplicate the solution by choosing multi-region active-active, not realizing that a single region with multiple AZs is sufficient and more cost-effective for the given requirement.
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
✓
Single region with multiple AZs active-active
The correct architecture is a single region with multiple Availability Zones (AZs) in an active-active configuration. This ensures that if one AZ fails, the application continues to serve traffic from the remaining AZs without any manual intervention, as all AZs are actively handling requests. AWS Availability Zones are physically separate data centers within a region, and an active-active pattern distributes the workload across them to achieve high availability and fault tolerance.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Single region with multiple AZs active-active
Why this is correct
This pattern distributes workloads across AZs, ensuring continued availability if one AZ fails.
- ✗
Single region with multiple AZs active-standby
Why it's wrong here
Active-standby introduces failover time that may not meet stringent availability requirements.
- ✗
Active-passive in a single region
Why it's wrong here
This pattern does not survive an AZ failure if both are in the same AZ.
- ✗
Multi-region active-active
Why it's wrong here
This is overkill for AZ failure and incurs higher cost and latency.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CCSP practice question is part of Courseiva's free ISC2 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 CCSP exam.