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Difficulty: HardHigh Availability and Disaster Recovery Design

A global pharmaceutical logistics company is designing a temperature-controlled vaccine shipment monitoring system on AWS. The application runs on Amazon EC2 instances in private subnets across multiple Availability Zones in both the `us-east-1` and `eu-west-1` Regions. The EC2 instances must query a database containing shipping telemetry and connect to external internet-based pharmaceutical registries to report alerts.

The business has specified a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 15 minutes and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 2 minutes. The architecture must automatically route end-users to the region with the lowest latency during normal operations, and redirect them to the alternate region if one region becomes unhealthy. Furthermore, internal microservices in both regions must resolve the internal endpoint `api.coldchain.internal` hosted in a Route 53 Private Hosted Zone (PHZ).

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

  1. Configure Amazon Aurora Global Database with the primary cluster in `us-east-1` and a secondary cluster in `eu-west-1`. Deploy Route 53 latency-based routing records with associated health checks pointing to the Application Load Balancers in both regions.Answer
  2. Deploy a NAT Gateway in each Availability Zone in both regions where the EC2 instances are located. Associate the Route 53 Private Hosted Zone containing the internal API record with the VPCs in both `us-east-1` and `eu-west-1`.Answer
  3. C
    Deploy a single NAT Gateway in a public subnet of a single Availability Zone in each region to route outbound traffic. Associate the Route 53 Private Hosted Zone with the `us-east-1` VPC only, and establish a VPC peering connection to allow the `eu-west-1` VPC to resolve the internal domain.
  4. D
    Configure Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL with Multi-AZ enabled in `us-east-1` as the primary database. Set up AWS Backup to perform hourly cross-region snapshot copies to `eu-west-1`, and restore the database from the latest snapshot during a disaster event.
  5. E
    Deploy Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL with Multi-AZ enabled in `us-east-1`. Configure the application instances in `eu-west-1` to read directly from the Multi-AZ standby instance located in the secondary Availability Zone of `us-east-1` to minimize cross-region latency.

Answer

The correct configurations are deploying Amazon Aurora Global Database for low RPO/RTO replication along with Route 53 latency-based routing with health checks, and deploying redundant NAT Gateways in each Availability Zone in both regions while associating the Route 53 Private Hosted Zone with the VPCs in both regions.
The correct strategy combines Amazon Aurora Global Database to achieve near-instant replication across regions (meeting RPO and RTO needs) and Route 53 latency records with health checks to steer users dynamically. High availability is maintained by configuring a NAT Gateway in each Availability Zone where workloads run, and the Route 53 Private Hosted Zone is associated with both VPCs to ensure local resolution works seamlessly.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Evaluate the database tier requirements against the target RPO of 2 minutes and RTO of 15 minutes across two AWS regions.
Identify that Amazon Aurora Global Database is required because it offers sub-second cross-region replication lag (meeting the 2-minute RPO) and can be promoted to a primary cluster in under a minute (meeting the 15-minute RTO). Traditional backups or RDS standby reads fail to satisfy these constraints.
Ensures that the database engine selection complies with the recovery window constraints of the disaster recovery plan.
2
Design the network outbound internet connectivity for the EC2 instances in private subnets in both regions.
Determine that a dedicated NAT Gateway must be placed in each Availability Zone where EC2 instances reside to avoid a single point of failure. If an AZ goes down, the remaining AZs continue to have independent outbound internet paths.
Maintains high availability for telemetry upload tasks by avoiding single points of failure at the NAT Gateway tier.
3
Configure internal DNS resolution for the microservice endpoint 'api.coldchain.internal' across both VPCs.
Associate the Route 53 Private Hosted Zone hosting the record with the VPCs in both the primary and secondary regions.
Allows instances in both regions to resolve the internal microservice address natively without relying on complex custom DNS forwarding or failing due to VPC peering routing assumptions.
4
Configure external user routing for low latency and automatic failover.
Set up Route 53 latency-based routing records pointing to the Application Load Balancers in both regions, and attach health checks to these records.
Directs users to the closest region for optimal performance and automatically routes traffic away from an unhealthy region in the event of a regional disaster.

Key Concept

Designing a multi-region active-passive architecture using Route 53 latency-based routing, Amazon Aurora Global Database for low RPO/RTO data replication, and establishing highly available outbound network access and shared DNS spaces.
Estimated Time:3m 0s
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Topics

High Availability and Disaster Recovery Design

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