AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C02) — Question 440

An online gaming company is designing a game that is expected to be popular all over the world. A solutions architect needs to define an AWS Cloud architecture that supports near-real-time recording and displaying of current game statistics for each player, along with the names of the top 25 players in the world, at any given time.
Which AWS database solution and configuration should the solutions architect use to meet these requirements?

Answer options

• A. Use Amazon RDS for MySQL as the data store for player activity. Configure the RDS DB instance for Multi-AZ support.
• B. Use Amazon DynamoDB as the data store for player activity. Configure DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) for the player data.
• C. Use Amazon DynamoDB as the data store for player activity. Configure global tables in each required AWS Region for the player data.
• D. Use Amazon RDS for MySQL as the data store for player activity. Configure cross-Region read replicas in each required AWS Region based on player proximity.

Correct answer: C

Explanation

Amazon DynamoDB with global tables is the ideal choice because it provides a fully managed, multi-Region, multi-active database that delivers single-digit millisecond latency for both reads and writes globally, meeting the near-real-time requirements. Amazon RDS for MySQL (Options A and D) is a relational database that cannot scale writes globally as efficiently as DynamoDB for real-time gaming metrics. DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) (Option B) is a read cache and does not solve the multi-Region write synchronization needed for a global player base.