Question

Difficulty: EasyResilient Database Configurations and High Availability

A retail company is launching a new online inventory tracking application. The application will use an Amazon RDS for MySQL database. The database must be highly available and support automatic failover to a standby instance in another Availability Zone within the same Region in the event of an outage. Which database configuration should the solutions architect choose to meet these requirements?

  1. A
    Create an Amazon RDS read replica in a different Availability Zone and configure it as the automatic failover target.
  2. B
    Configure Route 53 latency routing to automatically redirect database write traffic to an Amazon RDS read replica in another Availability Zone.
  3. Configure the Amazon RDS DB instance as a Multi-AZ deployment.Answer
  4. D
    Configure a pilot light disaster recovery strategy by keeping a stopped DB instance in another Availability Zone to achieve zero-second failover.

Answer

Configure the Amazon RDS DB instance as a Multi-AZ deployment.
Configuring the Amazon RDS DB instance as a Multi-AZ deployment is correct because it automatically provisions and maintains a synchronous standby replica in a different Availability Zone. If the primary instance fails, AWS automatically switches to the standby replica, providing high availability and automatic failover with minimal disruption and no manual intervention.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the requirements for high availability and automatic failover within the same AWS Region with minimal administrative effort.
Identify that the solution must provide synchronous replication and automated failover capabilities without requiring manual promotion or custom failover scripts.
This establishes the baseline criteria for evaluating AWS database configurations.
2
Evaluate Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployments against the requirements.
Confirm that Multi-AZ deployments provide automatic failover to a synchronous standby instance in a different Availability Zone during an outage.
This configuration directly satisfies the high availability and automatic failover requirements with zero administrative overhead.
3
Assess alternative options like read replicas and Route 53 routing.
Determine that read replicas require manual intervention to promote them to primary, and Route 53 routing policies cannot perform database-level failovers.
This eliminates incorrect configurations that fail to provide automatic failover.

Key Concept

Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployments provide high availability and automatic failover by synchronously replicating data to a standby instance in a different Availability Zone.
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