Design Resilient Architectures

382 questions

All types382 Multiple choice195 Multiple select187

A solutions architect is configuring an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to distribute traffic to a fleet of Amazon EC2 instances managed by an Auto Scaling group (ASG). The transit tracking application running on the EC2 instances listens on TCP port 3000. The target group is configured to route traffic to port 3000. However, the health check port in the target group configuration is set to port 80. The ALB marks all EC2 instances as unhealthy, even though the application is responsive when accessed directly on port 3000 from within the VPC. Which action should the solutions architect take to resolve this issue and restore healthy status?

Add an outbound rule to the security group of the EC2 instances to allow return traffic on port 80 to the ALB.

Configure a Route 53 latency routing policy to bypass target group health checks and route client traffic directly to the instances.

Modify the target group's health check configuration to query the traffic port or explicitly set it to port 3000.

Add an outbound rule to the subnet Network ACL to allow traffic from the EC2 instances to the ALB on ephemeral ports, since security groups are stateless.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Modify the target group's health check configuration to query the traffic port or explicitly set it to port 3000.

Answer

Modify the target group's health check configuration to query the traffic port or explicitly set it to port 3000.

The correct answer is to modify the target group's health check configuration to query the traffic port or port 3000. When an Application Load Balancer target group is configured with a health check port that does not match the port where the application is listening (for example, port 80 instead of port 3000), the health check probes will fail, leading the load balancer to mark all targets as unhealthy even if the application itself is fully operational.

Step-by-Step Solution

Identify the mismatch between the application listening port (port 3000) and the health check port (port 80) configured in the target group.

The ALB is attempting to perform health checks on port 80, which fails because the application is not listening on that port.

Understanding where the application is listening and how the health checks are configured is the first step in diagnosing ELB target health issues.

Update the target group health check settings to use the traffic port or port 3000.

The ALB successfully connects to the application on port 3000 during health checks.

Matching the health check port to the port where the service is active allows the ALB to accurately determine the health of the targets.

Key Concept

Target Group Health Checks and Port Configuration

Question 62Question →

An international smart grid utility corporation hosts its core telemetry visualization application on AWS. The application tier runs on Amazon EC2 instances inside an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The relational database tier is deployed as an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance. The company needs to design a cross-region disaster recovery (DR) solution that achieves a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 45 minutes and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 15 minutes, while minimizing compute costs and operational overhead during normal operations. Which architecture should a solutions architect recommend to meet these requirements?

Create a cross-region read replica of the RDS DB instance in the secondary Region. Deploy the Application Load Balancer and the Auto Scaling group in the secondary Region with the desired capacity set to 0. During failover, promote the read replica, scale up the Auto Scaling group, and update Route 53 DNS records.

Create a cross-region read replica of the RDS DB instance in the secondary Region. Configure the Application Load Balancer in the primary Region to automatically route write traffic to the read replica if the primary DB instance becomes unavailable.

Deploy the EC2 instances and ALB in the secondary Region. Configure Amazon Route 53 with a latency routing policy to dynamically direct all client traffic to the secondary Region to achieve automatic failover if the primary Region becomes unhealthy.

Back up the primary RDS DB instance to Amazon S3 daily, and copy the backups to the secondary Region using S3 Cross-Region Replication with an S3 Lifecycle policy that immediately transitions them to Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval. Restore the database from the Glacier archives during a disaster.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Create a cross-region read replica of the RDS DB instance in the secondary Region. Deploy the Application Load Balancer and the Auto Scaling group in the secondary Region with the desired capacity set to 0. During failover, promote the read replica, scale up the Auto Scaling group, and update Route 53 DNS records.

Answer

The correct strategy uses the Pilot Light pattern to achieve the recovery targets while keeping costs minimal. An Amazon RDS cross-region read replica satisfies the 15-minute RPO through asynchronous replication, which usually lags by only a few seconds. Deploying the application tier with an Auto Scaling group set to 0 capacity ensures that you only pay for storage and metadata rather than active compute instances during normal operations. During failover, the replica is promoted, the Auto Scaling group is scaled up to handle the load, and Amazon Route 53 points traffic to the new ALB, easily completing the process within the 45-minute RTO.

Step-by-Step Solution

Analyze RTO and RPO limits against workload characteristics.

An RPO of 15 minutes mandates continuous database replication to the secondary Region. An RTO of 45 minutes permits compute resources to be scaled up dynamically during failover rather than running continuously.

This establishes that a Pilot Light strategy is the most cost-effective approach for satisfying the disaster recovery objectives.

Configure the database tier for cross-region replication.

Create an Amazon RDS for MySQL cross-region read replica in the destination Region.

Asynchronous replication to the replica keeps the data recovery point within seconds or minutes, safely meeting the 15-minute RPO requirement.

Configure the compute and network tiers in the secondary Region.

Deploy the Application Load Balancer and Auto Scaling group with the desired capacity set to 0.

This avoids incurring compute costs for running idle EC2 instances during normal operations, while ensuring that the infrastructure is ready to scale up immediately during a disaster.

Execute the disaster recovery failover workflow.

Promote the read replica to a standalone primary database, scale up the Auto Scaling group instances, and update Route 53 records to route traffic to the secondary ALB.

These steps can be fully automated or executed manually within 10 to 15 minutes, well within the 45-minute RTO.

Key Concept

Disaster recovery strategies differ by Recovery Time Objective (RTO), Recovery Point Objective (RPO), and cost. A Pilot Light strategy keeps critical data replicated while keeping compute resources off or scaled to zero, minimizing cost while enabling recovery within minutes.

Question 63Question →

A credit scoring company hosts its core risk evaluation platform on AWS. The application runs on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer in the us-east-1 Region. The database tier uses an Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL DB cluster. The company needs to design a disaster recovery (DR) plan in the us-west-2 Region to handle a full region outage. The DR solution must achieve a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 5 minutes and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 30 minutes while minimizing ongoing running costs.

Which solution meets these requirements with the lowest cost?

Create an Amazon Aurora Global Database with the primary cluster in us-east-1 and a secondary cluster in us-west-2 containing zero DB instances. Copy the application AMIs to us-west-2. Deploy an AWS CloudFormation template that provisions the Application Load Balancer and the Auto Scaling group in us-west-2, and add a DB instance to the secondary Aurora cluster during a failover event.

Create an Amazon Aurora Global Database with a secondary DB cluster in us-west-2 containing a running DB instance of the same size. Deploy the Application Load Balancer and a scaled-down Auto Scaling group running at minimum capacity in us-west-2 to enable rapid traffic redirection during a failover event.

Configure an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL cross-region read replica in us-west-2. Set up Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing to automatically promote the read replica to primary and redirect all client application traffic to us-west-2 if the primary region becomes unavailable.

Configure daily Amazon Aurora DB cluster snapshots and copy them to an Amazon S3 bucket in us-west-2, transitioning them immediately to S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval. In the disaster recovery region, write an automation script to retrieve the snapshot, restore the DB cluster, and launch the compute tier.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Create an Amazon Aurora Global Database with the primary cluster in us-east-1 and a secondary cluster in us-west-2 containing zero DB instances. Copy the application AMIs to us-west-2. Deploy an AWS CloudFormation template that provisions the Application Load Balancer and the Auto Scaling group in us-west-2, and add a DB instance to the secondary Aurora cluster during a failover event.

Answer

The correct option implements a Pilot Light strategy using Amazon Aurora Global Database. Aurora Global Database replicates storage updates with typical replication lag of less than one second, satisfying the 5-minute RPO. By configuring the secondary cluster in the recovery region with zero DB instances, the compute cost is zero during normal operations. The 30-minute RTO provides ample time to add a DB instance to the secondary cluster and deploy the load balancer and Auto Scaling group via AWS CloudFormation templates.

Step-by-Step Solution

Analyze RPO requirements and select replication technology.

Amazon Aurora Global Database provides physical, storage-level replication with lag under 1 second, meeting the 5-minute RPO.

Standard daily backups or manual cross-region copies could violate the low RPO under peak write workloads.

Analyze RTO requirements and determine the pilot light compute state.

An RTO of 30 minutes allows sufficient time to provision compute resources dynamically rather than keeping them active.

Starting an Aurora DB instance in a headless secondary cluster and deploying EC2 instances via CloudFormation takes approximately 10 to 15 minutes, well within the 30-minute limit.

Evaluate costs of different active states in the secondary region.

Maintaining a secondary cluster with zero DB instances and using on-demand infrastructure provisioning via templates minimizes compute costs.

Warm Standby solutions require running continuous standby compute resources, which increases ongoing operational costs unnecessarily.

Key Concept

Pilot Light Disaster Recovery with Aurora Global Database

Question 64Question →

A company hosts an internal dashboard on Amazon EC2 instances managed by an Auto Scaling group (ASG). The dashboard application runs on custom port 8090. The ASG is registered with a target group behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The EC2 instances' security group is configured to allow inbound traffic from the ALB's security group on port 8090. However, the ALB marks all instances as unhealthy and returns a 502 Bad Gateway error to users. Local verification shows that the application is running and responding normally on port 8090 on each instance.

Which of the following actions should a solutions architect take to resolve this issue?

Add an inbound rule to the subnet's network ACL to allow traffic from the security group of the Application Load Balancer on port 8090.

Configure an Amazon Route 53 latency routing policy to route traffic directly to the public IP addresses of the EC2 instances, bypassing the Application Load Balancer.

Configure the target group's health check port to use port 8090 instead of the default port 80.

Add an outbound rule to the security group of the EC2 instances to explicitly allow ephemeral port range traffic to the Application Load Balancer for health check responses.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Configure the target group's health check port to use port 8090 instead of the default port 80.

Answer

Configure the target group's health check port to use port 8090 instead of the default port 80.

The correct action is to configure the target group's health check port to use port 8090 instead of the default port 80. The Application Load Balancer marks the EC2 instances as unhealthy because the health check configuration is querying the default port 80, whereas the application is only listening and responding on the custom port 8090. Updating the health check port ensures the load balancer checks the correct application endpoint.

Step-by-Step Solution

Diagnose the source of the 502 Bad Gateway error and unhealthy targets.

The Application Load Balancer (ALB) reports the targets as unhealthy because its health checks are failing. Since the application runs on custom port 8090 but local tests show it is healthy, the ALB is likely querying the wrong port.

By default, target group health checks query the default HTTP port (port 80) unless overridden or configured to use the traffic port.

Evaluate the target group configuration parameters.

Configuring the health check port to explicitly use port 8090 (or the traffic port) directs the ALB to query the correct port on which the service is listening.

This aligns the health check destination with the actual application port, allowing the health check requests to succeed.

Assess security and routing rules to rule out incorrect configurations.

Security groups are stateful, so outbound rules for return traffic are unnecessary. Network ACLs do not support security group references. Latency-based routing does not fix target group health failures.

Ensures the solution adheres to core AWS networking principles without introducing security group or network ACL misconfigurations.

Key Concept

ELB Health Check Port Configuration and Security Group Statefulness

Question 65Question →

An e-learning enterprise hosts its online classroom application in the us-east-1 Region. The architecture consists of Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group and an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance. The company needs to implement a cost-effective cross-Region disaster recovery (DR) solution in the us-west-2 Region. The DR solution must achieve a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 5 minutes and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 15 minutes. Which combination of actions should a solutions architect recommend to meet these requirements? (Select TWO.)

Select all that apply

Configure an Amazon RDS cross-Region read replica in the secondary Region, and promote the read replica to a primary DB instance during failover.

Deploy a scaled-down, active Auto Scaling group of EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer in the secondary Region.

Configure Amazon Route 53 with latency-based routing to automatically redirect application traffic to the secondary Region read replica in the event of an outage.

Deploy a pilot light environment in the secondary Region where EC2 instances are stopped, and copy RDS daily snapshots to Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval in the secondary Region.

Configure Amazon RDS Multi-AZ replication to synchronize data between the primary Region and the secondary Region, enabling automatic database failover.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Configure an Amazon RDS cross-Region read replica in the secondary Region, and promote the read replica to a primary DB instance during failover.; Deploy a scaled-down, active Auto Scaling group of EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer in the secondary Region.

Answer

Configure an Amazon RDS cross-Region read replica in the secondary Region and promote it during failover, combined with deploying a scaled-down, active Auto Scaling group of EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer in the secondary Region.

To meet the RPO of 5 minutes, database replication must be continuous. An Amazon RDS cross-Region read replica uses asynchronous replication to keep data synchronized with very low replication lag (usually seconds). Promoting this replica to a primary database instance takes a few minutes, which fits within the 15-minute RTO. To meet the RTO of 15 minutes for the compute tier, a Warm Standby environment is required. Deploying a scaled-down but active Auto Scaling group of EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer ensures that resources are already online and ready to quickly scale up to meet production demands without the boot latency associated with starting stopped instances.

Step-by-Step Solution

Analyze the RTO and RPO requirements.

The target RPO is 5 minutes and the RTO is 15 minutes, requiring a dynamic replication mechanism and an active or near-active computing environment.

Establishing these targets helps eliminate strategies with high recovery time (such as backup and restore from S3 Glacier) or high data loss.

Select the database replication strategy.

Identify that an Amazon RDS cross-Region read replica provides continuous asynchronous replication, keeping the data lag under 5 minutes (RPO), and can be promoted to primary within minutes (RTO).

RDS cross-Region read replicas are the standard way to replicate RDS PostgreSQL databases across Regions asynchronously.

Select the application compute strategy.

Determine that a Warm Standby strategy (deploying a scaled-down, active Auto Scaling group behind an ALB in the secondary Region) satisfies the 15-minute RTO because compute instances are already running and can be scaled up immediately.

A Pilot Light strategy with stopped instances would introduce startup delays that could risk breaching the strict 15-minute RTO under load.

Key Concept

Disaster Recovery strategies (Warm Standby vs. Pilot Light) and cross-Region database replication (RDS Read Replicas vs. Multi-AZ).

Estimated Time:2m 0s

Question 66Question →

A SaaS company provides a travel booking platform hosted in the us-east-1 Region. The architecture consists of Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer, and an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance. The company wants to establish a disaster recovery (DR) site in the us-west-2 Region using a Warm Standby pattern. The DR solution must achieve a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of $15$ minutes and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of $5$ minutes, while minimizing ongoing costs.

Which TWO actions should a solutions architect take to meet these requirements? (Select TWO.)

Select all that apply

Deploy a scaled-down Auto Scaling group of EC2 instances and an Application Load Balancer in the secondary Region, and configure the Auto Scaling group to scale up in response to traffic during failover.

Create an Amazon RDS Cross-Region Read Replica in the secondary Region, and write a script to promote the replica to a primary DB instance in a disaster recovery event.

Configure the Amazon RDS DB instance in Multi-AZ mode, selecting a subnet in the secondary Region as the standby zone to enable automatic cross-Region failover.

Configure an Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing policy to automatically redirect application traffic to the secondary Region during a primary Region outage.

Configure database backups to be stored in Amazon S3, transition them to S3 Glacier Deep Archive, and retrieve them in the secondary Region during failover.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Deploy a scaled-down Auto Scaling group of EC2 instances and an Application Load Balancer in the secondary Region, and configure the Auto Scaling group to scale up in response to traffic during failover.; Create an Amazon RDS Cross-Region Read Replica in the secondary Region, and write a script to promote the replica to a primary DB instance in a disaster recovery event.

Answer

The correct configurations are deploying a scaled-down Auto Scaling group of EC2 instances and an Application Load Balancer in the secondary Region (scaling up during failover) and creating an Amazon RDS Cross-Region Read Replica in the secondary Region (promoting it during failover).

To satisfy a

15

-minute RTO and

5

-minute RPO under a Warm Standby pattern at a minimal cost, the solutions architect must maintain a running but scaled-down compute tier and configure active database replication. Deploying a scaled-down Auto Scaling group in the secondary Region ensures compute instances are already running and can immediately scale up to handle full traffic when a failover occurs, meeting the RTO. Creating an Amazon RDS Cross-Region Read Replica provides continuous, asynchronous replication to the secondary Region with a lag typically under a few minutes, meeting the RPO. In a failover scenario, this replica is promoted to a standalone primary database to accept write operations.

Step-by-Step Solution

Select a database replication technology that meets the RPO constraint.

An Amazon RDS Cross-Region Read Replica provides asynchronous replication to the secondary Region with very low replication lag, satisfying the

5

-minute RPO.

Standard backups or snapshots cannot reliably meet a

5

-minute RPO without significant cost, while synchronous Multi-AZ does not cross Regions.

Select a compute standby strategy that meets the RTO constraint at a minimal cost.

Deploying a scaled-down Auto Scaling group of EC2 instances in the secondary Region ensures compute instances are already running and can scale up quickly, satisfying the

15

-minute RTO.

A Pilot Light strategy (zero instances running) may take too long to bootstrap and pass health checks, failing the

15

-minute RTO. An active-active setup is too costly.

Establish failover automation for database promotion.

Create a script to promote the read replica to a primary standalone DB instance during failover.

Promotion changes the replica to a primary instance capable of accepting write operations in the recovery Region.

Key Concept

Disaster recovery strategies differ by Recovery Time Objective (RTO), Recovery Point Objective (RPO), and cost. A Warm Standby deployment maintains scaled-down but running compute resources in the recovery Region along with active database replication (such as a Cross-Region Read Replica) to support rapid recovery while minimizing idle resource costs.

Estimated Time:2m 0s

Question 67Question →

A solutions architect is designing the database tier for a critical web application. The application will use an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance and requires high availability with automatic failover within a single AWS Region.

Which two options should the solutions architect implement to meet these requirements? (Select two.)

Select all that apply

Deploy the RDS DB instance in a Multi-AZ configuration to enable synchronous replication to a standby instance in a different Availability Zone.

Configure the application to connect using the primary DB instance DNS endpoint, which AWS automatically updates to point to the standby instance during failover.

Configure an RDS Read Replica in a different Availability Zone and update the application connection string to write to the replica if the primary instance fails.

Set up a Warm Standby DB instance in another AWS Region and use Route 53 latency-based routing to automatically redirect write traffic if the primary region goes offline.

Deploy the database in a Pilot Light configuration with a second scaled-down standby DB instance in another Availability Zone that is manually turned on during a failure.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Deploy the RDS DB instance in a Multi-AZ configuration to enable synchronous replication to a standby instance in a different Availability Zone.; Configure the application to connect using the primary DB instance DNS endpoint, which AWS automatically updates to point to the standby instance during failover.

Answer

Deploy the RDS DB instance in a Multi-AZ configuration to enable synchronous replication, and configure the application to connect using the primary DB instance DNS endpoint.

The correct options are deploying the RDS DB instance in a Multi-AZ configuration and configuring the application to connect using the primary DB instance DNS endpoint. Multi-AZ configurations provide synchronous replication and automatic failover to a standby instance in another Availability Zone. During failover, AWS automatically updates the DNS record of the DB instance endpoint, allowing the application to connect to the new primary instance without code or configuration changes.

Step-by-Step Solution

Identify the high availability (HA) and automatic failover requirements for Amazon RDS.

Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployments satisfy this by creating a synchronous standby replica in another Availability Zone.

Multi-AZ provides automatic failover, synchronous data replication, and high availability within a single AWS Region.

Determine how the application should handle connection redirection during a database failover.

Use the standard RDS DB instance DNS endpoint, which AWS automatically updates to point to the newly promoted primary standby.

This avoids having to modify the application's connection string when a failover occurs, keeping failover seamless.

Key Concept

Amazon RDS Multi-AZ High Availability and Failover Mechanics

Question 68Question →

A genetics research laboratory runs a high-performance gene sequencing application on Amazon EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones in a primary AWS Region. The application requires shared, concurrent access to a common file system that can store petabytes of genomic data with consistent sub-millisecond latencies. The laboratory needs to establish a disaster recovery (DR) architecture in a secondary AWS Region. The DR plan requires a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of less than 15 minutes for the shared storage layer. Which storage architecture should a solutions architect design to meet these requirements with the lowest operational overhead?

Deploy Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) in the primary Region using the Regional storage class. Enable EFS Replication to automatically replicate data to the secondary AWS Region. In the event of a disaster, mount the replicated EFS file system on EC2 instances in the secondary Region.

Store the genomic files in an Amazon S3 bucket. Configure an S3 Lifecycle policy to transition the files to Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval immediately, and configure S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) to replicate the Glacier objects. During a disaster recovery event, initiate standard retrievals to restore access to the EC2 instances.

Implement Amazon EFS in the primary Region. Configure AWS Backup to perform daily backups of the file system and copy them to the secondary Region. In the event of a failover, restore the EFS file system from the copied backup and mount it on the EC2 instances in the secondary Region.

Store the genomic files on Amazon EBS volumes attached to the EC2 instances. Deploy an Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL database cluster in the primary Region with a Read Replica in the secondary Region, and configure the database replication to synchronize the EBS volume block changes between Regions.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Deploy Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) in the primary Region using the Regional storage class. Enable EFS Replication to automatically replicate data to the secondary AWS Region. In the event of a disaster, mount the replicated EFS file system on EC2 instances in the secondary Region.

Answer

Deploy Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) in the primary Region using the Regional storage class and enable native EFS Replication to the secondary Region.

The correct option is the one proposing Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) with EFS Replication. EFS provides shared, concurrent access suitable for high-performance applications, and native cross-Region replication replicates changes to a destination file system within minutes, satisfying both the 15-minute RPO and the sub-15-minute RTO requirements with minimal operational overhead.

Step-by-Step Solution

Identify the storage access patterns and performance requirements.

The application requires shared, concurrent access to a common file system with sub-millisecond latencies, pointing to Amazon EFS rather than S3 (object storage) or EBS (block storage attached to single instances).

Choosing the correct storage service is the first step in designing a resilient architecture.

Evaluate the RPO and RTO constraints.

The RPO is 15 minutes and the RTO is less than 15 minutes. This requires continuous replication rather than daily batch backups.

Low recovery objectives rule out backup-and-restore or cold-tier options like standard S3 Glacier.

Select the replication and failover mechanism.

Native EFS Replication automatically and continuously replicates data to another AWS Region. The destination file system is active and mountable immediately, yielding an RTO of minutes and an RPO of minutes.

EFS Replication provides a fully managed, low-operational-overhead disaster recovery solution.

Key Concept

Amazon EFS Replication provides native cross-Region replication for shared file systems, offering low RPO (minutes) and RTO (minutes) for disaster recovery without operational complexity.

Question 69Question →

A financial firm needs to back up its daily transaction logs to AWS. The backups must be stored in a highly durable manner across multiple Availability Zones, and they must be immediately accessible for the first 30 days. For compliance, these backups must be replicated to a secondary AWS Region. After 30 days, the backups are rarely accessed but must be retained for 7 years. Which TWO actions should a solutions architect combine to meet these requirements?

Select all that apply

Store the daily backups in an Amazon S3 bucket, and configure Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) to copy them to a bucket in a secondary AWS Region.

Configure an Amazon S3 Lifecycle policy to transition the backup objects in both buckets to Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval after 30 days.

Store the daily backups in Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval from day one to minimize initial storage costs.

Store the backups on Amazon EBS gp3 volumes and enable EBS Multi-Attach to share the backup files across multiple EC2 instances in different regions.

Configure an Amazon S3 Lifecycle policy to transition the backup objects to Amazon S3 Standard-IA after 5 days to reduce costs.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Store the daily backups in an Amazon S3 bucket, and configure Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) to copy them to a bucket in a secondary AWS Region.; Configure an Amazon S3 Lifecycle policy to transition the backup objects in both buckets to Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval after 30 days.

Answer

Storing the daily backups in an Amazon S3 bucket with Cross-Region Replication (CRR) enabled, and configuring an S3 Lifecycle policy to transition the backup objects to Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval after 30 days.

Storing the daily backups in Amazon S3 ensures the data is replicated across multiple Availability Zones, providing high resilience and immediate retrieval. Cross-Region Replication (CRR) automates the replication of these backups to a secondary AWS Region for disaster recovery and compliance. Finally, an Amazon S3 Lifecycle policy configured to transition the backups to Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval after 30 days minimizes long-term storage costs while complying with the 7-year retention period, as the data is rarely accessed after the initial month.

Step-by-Step Solution

Store the data in Amazon S3 Standard to ensure high availability and durability across multiple Availability Zones, meeting the requirement of immediate accessibility for the first 30 days.

The backups are durable and immediately accessible.

S3 Standard provides low-latency, high-throughput access to objects with automatic replication across multiple AZs.

Configure Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) to copy new objects automatically to a destination bucket in a secondary AWS Region.

A copy of the backups is safely stored in a secondary AWS Region for compliance.

S3 CRR is the standard method for replicating S3 objects across different AWS Regions automatically.

Apply an Amazon S3 Lifecycle policy to transition objects from S3 Standard to S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval after 30 days.

Data older than 30 days is moved to lower-cost archive storage, meeting the 7-year retention requirement cost-effectively.

S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval is ideal for archiving data that is rarely accessed and can tolerate retrieval times of minutes to hours.

Key Concept

Leveraging Amazon S3 features such as Cross-Region Replication (CRR) and Lifecycle policies to build resilient, highly available, and cost-effective storage architectures.

Question 70Question →

A company is launching a new corporate training platform. The application uses an Amazon RDS for MariaDB DB instance to store employee progress data. The platform requires high availability with automatic failover to handle Availability Zone outages without manual intervention. Which two configurations or solutions should a solutions architect implement to meet these requirements? (Select TWO.)

Select all that apply

Modify the DB instance to use a Multi-AZ deployment configuration.

Configure the application to connect to the database using the database instance DNS endpoint.

Deploy a database read replica in a different Availability Zone and configure the application to write to this replica if the primary instance fails.

Configure Amazon Route 53 latency routing to failover write traffic to a database read replica during an outage.

Set up a Pilot Light disaster recovery configuration with a backup DB instance in a stopped state in the primary Availability Zone.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Modify the DB instance to use a Multi-AZ deployment configuration.; Configure the application to connect to the database using the database instance DNS endpoint.

Answer

To achieve high availability with automatic failover, the solutions architect should modify the database to use a Multi-AZ deployment and configure the application to connect using the database instance DNS endpoint.

Enabling a Multi-AZ deployment ensures Amazon RDS maintains a synchronous standby replica in a different Availability Zone. During an outage, RDS automatically performs a failover. Using the DNS endpoint in the application configuration is critical because AWS updates this endpoint's DNS record during failover to point to the standby replica, allowing the application to reconnect automatically.

Step-by-Step Solution

Enable Multi-AZ deployment for the database instance.

Amazon RDS creates a synchronous standby replica in a different Availability Zone.

This provides physical redundancy across Availability Zones and enables automatic failover capabilities.

Point the application's connection string to the RDS DNS endpoint.

The application connects using a domain name rather than a hardcoded IP address.

During failover, AWS automatically updates the DNS CNAME record of the endpoint to resolve to the new primary database instance.

Key Concept

Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployments provide high availability and automatic failover by maintaining a synchronous standby replica in a different Availability Zone and updating the DNS endpoint during failover.

Estimated Time:1m 0s

Question 71Question →

A logistics company runs a global supply chain portal that uses a PostgreSQL-compatible relational database. The application is deployed in a primary AWS Region (us-east-1) and a secondary AWS Region (us-west-2). The database tier must support a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of under $1$ second and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of under $2$ minutes for disaster recovery. The secondary region must also serve local read traffic with low latency. Which database configuration meets these requirements with the least operational overhead?

Deploy an Amazon Aurora Global Database with the primary cluster in us-east-1 and a secondary cluster in us-west-2. In the event of a regional outage, promote the secondary cluster to primary.

Deploy an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL Multi-AZ DB cluster in us-east-1, and create a cross-region read replica in us-west-2. Configure the application in us-west-2 to write to the read replica in the event of a failover.

Deploy Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instances in both us-east-1 and us-west-2. Set up AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) in a Pilot Light disaster recovery configuration to replicate transactions continuously.

Deploy standalone Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instances in both regions. Configure Amazon Route 53 with latency-based routing to dynamically route write operations to the database with the lowest latency.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Deploy an Amazon Aurora Global Database with the primary cluster in us-east-1 and a secondary cluster in us-west-2. In the event of a regional outage, promote the secondary cluster to primary.

Answer

Deploy an Amazon Aurora Global Database with the primary cluster in us-east-1 and a secondary cluster in us-west-2. In the event of a regional outage, promote the secondary cluster to primary.

Amazon Aurora Global Database is designed for globally distributed applications. It uses fast, storage-based replication that keeps lag under

1

second (meeting the RPO of under

1

second). During a regional disaster, the secondary cluster can be promoted to a primary read-write cluster in under

2

minutes (meeting the RTO of under

2

minutes). Local read replicas in the secondary cluster can serve local read traffic with minimal latency, fulfilling the read scaling constraint with minimal operational overhead.

Step-by-Step Solution

Analyze the requirements for database engine compatibility, cross-region capability, RTO, RPO, and read scaling.

Identify that the database must be PostgreSQL-compatible, support cross-region read scaling, and have an RPO under

1

second and RTO under

2

minutes.

This establishes the boundaries for evaluating AWS database replication mechanisms.

Evaluate Amazon Aurora Global Database performance metrics against the RTO and RPO targets.

Aurora Global Database features typical RPO of less than

1

second and can be promoted to a primary cluster in less than

2

minutes.

This meets both the recovery criteria and local read requirements in the secondary region.

Examine alternative database replication solutions such as RDS Multi-AZ with cross-region read replicas or DMS Pilot Light setups.

Determine that RDS read replicas do not support direct write failovers without manual intervention, and Pilot Light configurations fail the RTO target.

This rules out the distractors as they cannot satisfy the combination of recovery speed and replication capability.

Key Concept

Amazon Aurora Global Database provides cross-region replication with sub-second RPO and fast promotion for under 2-minute RTO, while supporting local reads.

Estimated Time:2m 0s

Question 72Question →

A global logistics platform is migrating its critical shipment tracking database to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL. The database must be highly available within the local region, achieving a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of less than $30$ seconds for failovers. Additionally, the system must handle a heavy volume of read requests without degrading the performance of write transactions. Which combination of configurations should a solutions architect implement to meet these requirements? (Select TWO.)

Select all that apply

Deploy an Amazon Aurora DB cluster across multiple Availability Zones with a primary writer instance and at least one reader instance.

Configure the application to use the Aurora cluster writer endpoint for write operations and the reader endpoint for read operations.

Provision a single-AZ Aurora instance and configure an external RDS Read Replica in a different Availability Zone to serve as the automatic failover target.

Configure an Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing policy to split database write transactions between the primary instance and a read replica.

Implement a pilot light recovery strategy by exporting database snapshots to Amazon S3 and restoring them to a new cluster during an outage.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Deploy an Amazon Aurora DB cluster across multiple Availability Zones with a primary writer instance and at least one reader instance.; Configure the application to use the Aurora cluster writer endpoint for write operations and the reader endpoint for read operations.

Answer

Deploy an Amazon Aurora DB cluster across multiple Availability Zones with a primary writer instance and at least one reader instance, and configure the application to use the Aurora cluster writer endpoint for write operations and the reader endpoint for read operations.

Deploying an Amazon Aurora DB cluster across multiple Availability Zones with a reader instance ensures automatic, rapid failover (typically under

30

seconds) when the primary writer fails. By utilizing the cluster's dedicated writer and reader endpoints, the application can cleanly separate write transactions from heavy read volumes, ensuring read scaling does not degrade write performance.

Step-by-Step Solution

Select a database configuration that supports automatic regional failover under

30

seconds.

Amazon Aurora Multi-AZ deployment with at least one Aurora Replica (reader) is chosen. In the event of a writer failure, Aurora promotes the reader to primary writer within

30

seconds.

Meets the high availability and strict RTO requirements.

Address the read scaling requirement without impacting write performance.

Configure application connection endpoints to direct read traffic to the Aurora reader endpoint and write traffic to the writer endpoint.

This offloads read operations from the writer instance, preserving write transaction throughput.

Key Concept

Amazon Aurora Multi-AZ failover mechanics and endpoint routing for read/write scaling.

Question 73Question →

A financial auditing enterprise hosts its document archiving application on AWS. The primary storage consists of an Amazon S3 bucket located in us-east-1 containing compliance records. The company must establish a disaster recovery (DR) site in us-west-2 that guarantees a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of $15$ minutes and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of $15$ minutes. The data must be stored with a durability of $99.999999999\%$ . Which storage architecture meets these requirements?

Configure Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) to a destination S3 bucket in us-west-2 with S3 Replication Time Control (S3 RTC) enabled, and run the application in an active-passive configuration.

Configure Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) to replicate compliance records to the Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval storage class in us-west-2, and initiate Standard retrievals during a disaster recovery failover event.

Implement a Pilot Light disaster recovery strategy where compliance records are replicated to Amazon S3 in us-west-2 with the compute resources kept offline, expecting automated scripts to boot and scale the application tier within the

15

-minute RTO.

Migrate the record storage to an Amazon RDS Multi-AZ DB instance in us-east-1, configure a Read Replica in us-west-2, and promote the Read Replica during a failover to serve as the highly available storage tier.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Configure Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) to a destination S3 bucket in us-west-2 with S3 Replication Time Control (S3 RTC) enabled, and run the application in an active-passive configuration.

Answer

The correct solution uses Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) with S3 Replication Time Control (S3 RTC). S3 RTC guarantees that

99.9\%

of uploaded objects are replicated to the destination region within

15

minutes, directly fulfilling the

15

-minute RPO. Because the files are replicated to standard S3 storage, they are immediately accessible during a failover event, easily satisfying the

15

-minute RTO. Amazon S3 Standard also natively provides

99.999999999\%

data durability.

Step-by-Step Solution

Analyze the durability and recovery metrics required by the business scenario.

The platform needs

99.999999999\%

(11 nines) durability, an RPO of

15

minutes, and an RTO of

15

minutes.

These constraints narrow the storage target to Amazon S3 Standard (for durability) and require a replication mechanism that completes within

15

minutes with immediate data availability.

Evaluate the replication options for Amazon S3 across regions.

Standard Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) does not provide a replication time guarantee, but enabling S3 Replication Time Control (S3 RTC) guarantees replication of

99.9\%

of objects within

15

minutes.

To satisfy a strict

15

-minute RPO, a replication time SLA like S3 RTC is required to ensure files are copied to the secondary region within the threshold.

Evaluate the accessibility of replicated storage classes in the secondary region.

Objects replicated to S3 Standard in the destination bucket are immediately readable. In contrast, S3 Glacier classes require a retrieval process.

The RTO is

15

minutes, meaning data must be ready for immediate read operations. Glacier Standard retrieval takes

3

5

hours, which violates the RTO.

Key Concept

High availability and disaster recovery for object storage using Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) and S3 Replication Time Control (S3 RTC) to meet tight RPO/RTO SLAs.

Estimated Time:2m 0s

Question 74Question →

A logistics company is designing the database tier for a real-time package tracking system. The database must be compatible with MySQL, support automatic failover within the primary AWS Region with a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of less than 30 seconds and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 0, and provide a cross-Region disaster recovery (DR) solution with an RTO of under 15 minutes and an RPO of under 5 seconds. Which combination of AWS database configurations will meet these requirements? (Select TWO.)

Select all that apply

Deploy the primary database as an Amazon Aurora MySQL DB cluster with a writer instance in one Availability Zone and a reader instance in another Availability Zone.

Configure an Amazon Aurora Global Database by adding a secondary Aurora DB cluster in the recovery Region, utilizing storage-level replication.

Deploy a single-instance Amazon RDS for MySQL database in the primary Region, and create a cross-Region read replica in the recovery Region to handle automatic failover.

Use Amazon Route 53 latency routing to automatically redirect database write traffic between the primary and recovery database endpoints during a failover event.

Implement a Pilot Light disaster recovery strategy by copying hourly database backups to the recovery Region and provisioning a scaled-down database instance that remains in a stopped state until a failover is initiated.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Deploy the primary database as an Amazon Aurora MySQL DB cluster with a writer instance in one Availability Zone and a reader instance in another Availability Zone.; Configure an Amazon Aurora Global Database by adding a secondary Aurora DB cluster in the recovery Region, utilizing storage-level replication.

Answer

Deploying the primary database as an Amazon Aurora MySQL DB cluster with a writer and a reader instance in different Availability Zones, and configuring an Amazon Aurora Global Database by adding a secondary cluster in the recovery Region.

The correct combination consists of deploying the primary database as an Amazon Aurora MySQL DB cluster with a reader instance in a different Availability Zone (providing local Multi-AZ high availability with RTO < 30 seconds and RPO = 0 via shared storage replication) and configuring an Amazon Aurora Global Database with a secondary cluster in the recovery Region (meeting the RTO of under 15 minutes and RPO of under 5 seconds through low-latency storage-level replication).

Step-by-Step Solution

Evaluate the database compatibility and local resilience requirements.

The requirement for MySQL compatibility, local RTO < 30 seconds, and local RPO = 0 points to Amazon Aurora MySQL. Deploying an Aurora cluster with a writer in one Availability Zone and a reader in a different Availability Zone enables automatic failover in under 30 seconds with 0 data loss (RPO = 0) because the underlying storage volume is replicated across three Availability Zones.

Traditional RDS read replicas or single-instance databases do not support automatic failover or fail to meet the 30-second RTO.

Evaluate the disaster recovery requirements for the secondary Region.

The requirements of RTO < 15 minutes and RPO < 5 seconds are met by Amazon Aurora Global Databases. Aurora Global Databases use storage-based replication to copy data to a secondary Region with a latency of less than 1 second (meeting the RPO of under 5 seconds). If a failover is needed, the secondary cluster can be promoted to a standalone read/write cluster in under a minute (meeting the RTO of under 15 minutes).

Backup-based strategies (like Pilot Light with hourly copies) fail the 5-second RPO, and standard RDS replica failover across Regions is not automated.

Key Concept

Amazon Aurora Multi-AZ deployment and Aurora Global Databases for high availability and low-RPO/RTO cross-Region disaster recovery.

Estimated Time:2m 30s

Question 75Question →

An enterprise is migrating a critical, write-heavy core banking application to AWS. The database architecture must satisfy the following resiliency requirements:
- Within the primary AWS region, the database must achieve high availability with zero data loss (Recovery Point Objective, $\text{RPO} = 0$ ) and automated failover in less than 30 seconds.
- Across a secondary AWS region, the disaster recovery solution must support active read scaling during normal operations, maintain a cross-region replication lag under 2 seconds ( $\text{RPO} < 2$ seconds), and allow failover to the secondary region in less than 5 minutes ( $\text{RTO} < 5$ minutes).

Which database configuration meets these requirements with the lowest operational overhead?

Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible Edition with an Aurora Global Database. Deploy the primary cluster in the main region and a secondary cluster in the recovery region, routing read traffic in the secondary region to the local reader instances.

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL with a Multi-AZ DB instance deployment in the primary region, and a cross-region Read Replica in the secondary region. Use Route 53 Latency Routing to automatically direct database write traffic to the replica in the secondary region if the primary region becomes unavailable.

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL with a Multi-AZ DB instance deployment in the primary region. In the secondary region, configure a pilot light database environment by restoring daily snapshots transferred from the primary region, scale up the instance class only during failover, and direct traffic using Route 53 Failover Routing.

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL with a Single-AZ DB instance deployment in the primary region. Configure an asynchronous cross-region Read Replica in the secondary region, and write a custom AWS Lambda script to monitor primary database health and automatically promote the replica during a regional outage.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible Edition with an Aurora Global Database. Deploy the primary cluster in the main region and a secondary cluster in the recovery region, routing read traffic in the secondary region to the local reader instances.

Answer

The correct option implements Amazon Aurora Global Database, which matches all constraints. For local high availability, Aurora replicates data synchronously across three AZs, ensuring

\text{RPO} = 0

and automated failover in less than 30 seconds. For multi-region resilience, storage-based physical replication keeps lag below 2 seconds (typically under 1 second), and secondary clusters can serve active read traffic and be promoted to primary in less than a minute.

Step-by-Step Solution

Analyze single-region high availability requirements.

The solution requires

\text{RPO} = 0

(zero data loss) and automated failover in less than 30 seconds within the primary region. Aurora replicates data across three AZs with shared storage, achieving synchronous-like durabilities and automatic failover within 30 seconds, meeting the local HA requirements.

Ensures the database survives an Availability Zone outage without data loss and with minimal recovery time.

Analyze cross-region disaster recovery and read-scaling requirements.

The secondary region needs read scaling,

\text{RPO} < 2

seconds, and

\text{RTO} < 5

minutes. Aurora Global Databases use storage-based replication with a typical lag of less than 1 second, allow reader instances in the secondary region to serve local read traffic, and can be promoted to primary within 1 minute.

Guarantees that regional disaster recovery requirements are met while optimizing read performance for secondary region users.

Evaluate the operational overhead and suitability of alternative services.

RDS PostgreSQL Multi-AZ with cross-region read replicas requires manual intervention or complex automation for cross-region failover and does not support storage-level global replication. Restoring from daily snapshots (pilot light) violates the 2-second RPO requirement.

Selects the option that minimizes custom automation and meets all RPO/RTO constraints natively.

Key Concept

Amazon Aurora Global Databases and Multi-AZ replication

Question 76Question →

A financial technology company operates an online transaction processing (OLTP) application using Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. The primary database runs in us-east-1 with a Multi-AZ deployment. To comply with disaster recovery regulations, the company requires a secondary database copy in us-west-2. The solution must achieve a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of less than 5 minutes and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of less than 15 minutes in the event of a total failure of the us-east-1 region. Which strategy should a solutions architect implement to meet these disaster recovery requirements?

Create a cross-region read replica of the primary database in us-west-2. In the event of a region-wide outage in us-east-1, promote the read replica in us-west-2 to a standalone DB instance, and update the application configuration to point to the new database endpoint.

Configure the us-west-2 cross-region read replica to participate in the Multi-AZ replication group. Configure the RDS database to automatically failover to the us-west-2 replica in the event of a us-east-1 failure, utilizing Route 53 Latency routing to redirect application traffic.

Create a cross-region read replica in us-west-2 using a cost-optimized, smaller instance type (e.g., db.t3.micro). Write an AWS Lambda function triggered by a Route 53 health check failure to modify the instance type to match the primary instance size and then promote it to primary.

Configure a Route 53 Active-Active failover policy with latency routing to distribute traffic between the us-east-1 primary instance and the us-west-2 read replica. Enable Route 53 health checks on both endpoints so that writes are automatically routed to us-west-2 if us-east-1 becomes unavailable.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Create a cross-region read replica of the primary database in us-west-2. In the event of a region-wide outage in us-east-1, promote the read replica in us-west-2 to a standalone DB instance, and update the application configuration to point to the new database endpoint.

Answer

Creating a cross-region read replica in us-west-2 provides asynchronous replication that keeps the replication lag under a few seconds, meeting the 5-minute Recovery Point Objective (RPO). In the event of a region-wide outage, manually promoting the read replica to a standalone database instance takes under 10 minutes, satisfying the 15-minute Recovery Time Objective (RTO). Once promoted, pointing the application configuration to the new endpoint restores write traffic.

Step-by-Step Solution

Deploy a cross-region read replica of the primary Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL instance in us-west-2 to establish asynchronous replication.

Database updates are continuously replicated to us-west-2 with low replication lag, satisfying the 5-minute RPO requirement.

This sets up the target database in the secondary region to act as the recovery destination.

During a region-wide failure in us-east-1, initiate the promotion of the us-west-2 read replica to a standalone DB instance.

The replica is disconnected from replication and becomes a primary read-write database instance, taking approximately 5 to 10 minutes.

Promotion is necessary because read replicas cannot accept write operations, and the promotion process is within the 15-minute RTO.

Update the application's database connection strings or DNS records to route active client traffic to the newly promoted DB endpoint in us-west-2.

Client application traffic is successfully redirected to the new write-capable database instance in the secondary region.

This completes the disaster recovery failover path and restores full write functionality.

Key Concept

Cross-Region Disaster Recovery with Amazon RDS Read Replicas

Question 77Question →

A company is running a web application on Amazon EC2 instances deployed across multiple Availability Zones in a single AWS Region. The application requires a shared file system that allows concurrent read and write access from all EC2 instances, while maintaining high availability and durability across the entire region. Which storage service should a Solutions Architect recommend?

Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS)

Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) gp3 volumes

Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval

Amazon RDS with Read Replicas in each Availability Zone

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS)

Answer

Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS)

The correct answer is Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) because it is a managed shared file system that natively replicates data across multiple Availability Zones within an AWS Region. It supports the Network File System (NFSv4) protocol, allowing hundreds of EC2 instances in different Availability Zones to concurrently read and write to the same storage system, thereby meeting the high availability and resilience requirements.

Step-by-Step Solution

Analyze the application requirements.

The application requires a shared file storage solution that supports concurrent read/write operations from EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones.

This rules out single-AZ block storage systems like standard EBS, as well as database-specific solutions or archival solutions.

Evaluate the capabilities of Amazon EFS.

Amazon EFS provides a serverless, shared file system that is natively designed to span multiple Availability Zones within a region and allows concurrent connections.

This aligns perfectly with the high availability and cross-AZ concurrent access requirements.

Key Concept

Shared file storage spanning multiple Availability Zones

Question 78Question →

A financial company hosts an auditing application on AWS. The application stores large transaction logs that must be retained for compliance. In the event of a regional outage, the company needs to recover the application in a secondary AWS Region. The recovery solution must achieve a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of $20$ minutes and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of $1$ hour.

Which storage and disaster recovery configuration meets these requirements?

Store the transaction logs in an Amazon S3 bucket in the primary Region. Configure S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) to replicate the logs to an S3 Standard bucket in the secondary Region, and deploy a Warm Standby environment in the secondary Region.

Store the transaction logs in an Amazon S3 bucket. Configure S3 Cross-Region Replication to copy the logs to Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval in the secondary Region, and use standard retrieval to access the logs during a disaster.

Store the transaction logs in Amazon S3. In the secondary Region, implement a Pilot Light disaster recovery strategy where all backup storage volumes and compute environments are provisioned and restored from snapshots only after a failover is initiated.

Store the transaction logs in an Amazon RDS database with Multi-AZ enabled, and configure a cross-region Read Replica to automatically perform a failover and promote itself to the primary database when the primary Region goes offline.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Store the transaction logs in an Amazon S3 bucket in the primary Region. Configure S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) to replicate the logs to an S3 Standard bucket in the secondary Region, and deploy a Warm Standby environment in the secondary Region.

Answer

Store the transaction logs in Amazon S3 and replicate them using Cross-Region Replication to a secondary Region with S3 Standard, and deploy a Warm Standby environment in the secondary Region.

The correct answer combines Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) and a Warm Standby DR pattern. S3 CRR replicates transaction logs to a secondary Region within minutes, satisfying the 1-hour RPO. A Warm Standby deployment maintains scaled-down but active compute resources in the secondary Region, allowing the system to be scaled up and serve traffic within 20 minutes, thus satisfying the 1-hour RPO and 20-minute RTO requirements.

Step-by-Step Solution

Analyze RPO requirements

An RPO of 1 hour requires the storage layer to replicate data to the secondary Region in less than 1 hour.

Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) replicates objects within minutes, meeting the 1-hour RPO.

Analyze RTO requirements

An RTO of 20 minutes requires application infrastructure to be ready to handle traffic rapidly, which cannot be met by deploying resources from scratch or restoring backups dynamically.

A Warm Standby disaster recovery strategy provides a scaled-down but active copy of the infrastructure, allowing failover to complete well within the 20-minute limit.

Evaluate the database replication strategy

RDS Read Replicas do not support automatic cross-region failover, meaning manual promotion is required, which may not reliably fit the recovery process without pre-warmed infrastructure.

Correct database failover must be handled as part of the overall application recovery strategy, using multi-region replica promotion or manual orchestration within the Warm Standby framework.

Key Concept

Designing multi-region disaster recovery using S3 Cross-Region Replication and a Warm Standby architecture to meet strict RTO and RPO requirements.

Estimated Time:1m 30s

Question 79Question →

A digital assets platform hosts a collaborative content creation application on Amazon EC2 instances distributed across three Availability Zones. The application requires a shared storage solution that supports concurrent read and write operations from all instances while maintaining high availability and durability. Additionally, the platform must archive finalized media assets. These archived assets must be stored with maximum durability, and the platform must guarantee that any archived asset can be retrieved within a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 5 minutes. Which combination of storage solutions meets these requirements?

Use Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) with the One Zone storage class for the shared application files. Store the archived media assets in Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval and utilize Standard retrievals.

Use an Amazon EBS volume with Multi-Attach enabled to share files across all EC2 instances. Store the archived media assets in Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive and utilize Standard retrievals.

Use Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) with the Standard storage class for the shared application files. Store the archived media assets in Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval and utilize Expedited retrievals.

Configure each EC2 instance with a local Amazon EBS volume and use a pilot light disaster recovery script to synchronize files between volumes. Store the archived media assets in Amazon S3 Standard and use a lifecycle policy to move them to Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval with Bulk retrievals.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Use Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) with the Standard storage class for the shared application files. Store the archived media assets in Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval and utilize Expedited retrievals.

Answer

Use Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) with the Standard storage class for the shared application files, and store the archived media assets in Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval utilizing Expedited retrievals.

The correct option provides a highly available, multi-AZ shared file storage solution using Amazon EFS Standard, which allows multiple EC2 instances to read and write concurrently. It also utilizes Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval with Expedited retrievals, which typically complete in 1 to 5 minutes, satisfying the 5-minute RTO requirement.

Step-by-Step Solution

Evaluate the shared storage requirement for multiple EC2 instances distributed across three Availability Zones.

Identify that Amazon EFS Standard provides a fully managed, shared file system that supports simultaneous read/write access across multiple Availability Zones, whereas EBS Multi-Attach is limited to a single Availability Zone.

To ensure high availability and concurrent access across multiple AZs, EFS Standard is the appropriate choice.

Evaluate the recovery time objective (RTO) for retrieving archived media assets.

Identify that Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval with Expedited retrievals fulfills the RTO requirement of 5 minutes by retrieving data in 1 to 5 minutes.

Standard and Bulk retrievals, as well as Glacier Deep Archive, have retrieval times ranging from several hours to 12 hours, which fail to meet the 5-minute RTO.

Key Concept

Multi-AZ shared file systems using Amazon EFS and matching S3 Glacier retrieval tiers with strict recovery time objectives.

Estimated Time:1m 30s

Question 80Question →

A logistics platform is designing an active-passive disaster recovery strategy for its tracking portal under the apex domain logistics-track.com. The primary application is hosted behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB) in the us-east-1 Region, while the secondary disaster recovery site is a static maintenance page hosted on Amazon S3 in the us-west-2 Region. The platform requires that users be directed automatically to the maintenance page if the primary application in us-east-1 becomes unavailable. Which Route 53 configuration should a solutions architect implement to meet these requirements with the least operational overhead?

Create a primary Failover Alias record for logistics-track.com pointing to the ALB with Evaluate Target Health set to Yes. Create a secondary Failover Alias record pointing to the Amazon S3 bucket.

Create a primary Latency Alias record for logistics-track.com pointing to the ALB with Evaluate Target Health set to Yes. Create a secondary Latency Alias record pointing to the S3 bucket to automatically route based on regional responsiveness.

Create a primary Failover CNAME record for logistics-track.com pointing to the ALB DNS name. Create a secondary Failover CNAME record pointing to the Amazon S3 static website endpoint.

Create a primary Failover Alias record for logistics-track.com pointing to the ALB. Create a secondary Failover Alias record pointing to an Amazon RDS read replica DNS endpoint in us-west-2 to serve the maintenance page data directly.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Create a primary Failover Alias record for logistics-track.com pointing to the ALB with Evaluate Target Health set to Yes. Create a secondary Failover Alias record pointing to the Amazon S3 bucket.

Answer

Create a primary Failover Alias record for logistics-track.com pointing to the ALB with Evaluate Target Health set to Yes, and a secondary Failover Alias record pointing to the S3 bucket.

The correct configuration uses Route 53 Alias records because CNAME records are invalid at the zone apex (logistics-track.com). It leverages the Failover routing policy to route traffic to the primary ALB when healthy and fall back to the secondary S3 bucket when unhealthy. By setting Evaluate Target Health to Yes, Route 53 automatically monitors the health of the backend targets registered with the ALB, removing the operational overhead of setting up separate Route 53 health checks.

Step-by-Step Solution

Determine the record type for the zone apex domain.

An Alias record must be used because standard DNS CNAME records cannot be created at the zone apex (logistics-track.com).

Alias records allow Route 53 to map the zone apex directly to selected AWS resources like ALBs and S3 buckets.

Select the appropriate routing policy for the active-passive disaster recovery requirement.

Failover routing policy is selected.

Failover routing is specifically designed for active-passive disaster recovery configurations where traffic is sent to a primary resource when healthy, and to a secondary resource when the primary is unhealthy.

Configure health checks for the primary destination.

Set Evaluate Target Health to Yes on the primary record.

Setting Evaluate Target Health to Yes allows Route 53 to use the health checks defined on the ALB's target groups, eliminating the need to create and manage custom Route 53 health checks manually.

Key Concept

Route 53 DNS Failover for Zone Apex using Alias Records

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