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Difficulty: MediumResilient Database Configurations and High Availability

An enterprise core banking application requires a relational database backend. The database configuration must achieve a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 00 (no data loss) and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of less than 3030 seconds during an Availability Zone outage. The architecture must also support scaling read operations for reporting tools without impacting the primary database's write performance. Which database configuration meets these requirements with the lowest RTO and minimal operational effort?

  1. Deploy an Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL DB cluster with a primary DB instance and at least one Aurora Replica in a different Availability Zone. Configure the reporting tools to use the cluster reader endpoint.Answer
  2. B
    Deploy an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance in a single Availability Zone. Create a Read Replica in a different Availability Zone, and use an Amazon Route 53 latency routing policy with health checks to automatically route write traffic to the replica during an outage.
  3. C
    Deploy an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL database in a Multi-AZ DB instance deployment. Configure the reporting tools to connect directly to the standby replica to scale read operations.
  4. D
    Deploy two independent single-AZ Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instances in different Availability Zones. Set up AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) to perform bidirectional replication, and use an Application Load Balancer to distribute read and write traffic.

Answer

Deploy an Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL DB cluster with a primary DB instance and at least one Aurora Replica in a different Availability Zone, and configure the reporting tools to use the cluster reader endpoint.
The correct configuration uses Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL with a primary instance and an Aurora Replica in a different Availability Zone. Aurora's storage layer replicates data synchronously across three Availability Zones, ensuring an RPO of 00 (no data loss). If the primary instance fails, failover to the replica is automatic and typically completes in under 3030 seconds. Additionally, the reporting tools can use the cluster reader endpoint to query the replica, offloading read operations from the primary writer instance.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) requirements for RPO and RTO.
The requirements demand an RPO of 00 (no data loss, indicating synchronous replication at the storage or database layer) and an RTO of less than 3030 seconds (requiring fast, automated failover).
Establishing these target limits helps filter out database engines or replication methods that rely on asynchronous replication or manual promotion steps.
2
Evaluate the read-scaling requirement.
The configuration must support offloading reporting queries from the primary write database instance to separate read-only resources.
This rules out configurations like standard RDS Multi-AZ DB instance deployments, which use a passive standby instance that cannot be read from.
3
Compare Amazon Aurora and Amazon RDS Multi-AZ capability profiles against the constraints.
Amazon Aurora replicates data synchronously across three Availability Zones at the storage layer (RPO of 00) and can automatically failover to an Aurora Replica in another Availability Zone in less than 3030 seconds (RTO < 3030 seconds). The Aurora reader endpoint provides built-in load balancing for read scaling.
Aurora matches all RTO, RPO, and read scaling requirements with minimal operational complexity.

Key Concept

High Availability and Read Scaling in Amazon Aurora and Amazon RDS
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Topics

Resilient Database Configurations and High Availability

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