AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) — Question 477

A company has migrated multiple Microsoft Windows Server workloads to Amazon EC2 instances that run in the us-west-1 Region. The company manually backs up the workloads to create an image as needed.

In the event of a natural disaster in the us-west-1 Region, the company wants to recover workloads quickly in the us-west-2 Region. The company wants no more than 24 hours of data loss on the EC2 instances. The company also wants to automate any backups of the EC2 instances.

Which solutions will meet these requirements with the LEAST administrative effort? (Choose two.)

Answer options

• A. Create an Amazon EC2-backed Amazon Machine Image (AMI) lifecycle policy to create a backup based on tags. Schedule the backup to run twice daily. Copy the image on demand.
• B. Create an Amazon EC2-backed Amazon Machine Image (AMI) lifecycle policy to create a backup based on tags. Schedule the backup to run twice daily. Configure the copy to the us-west-2 Region.
• C. Create backup vaults in us-west-1 and in us-west-2 by using AWS Backup. Create a backup plan for the EC2 instances based on tag values. Create an AWS Lambda function to run as a scheduled job to copy the backup data to us-west-2.
• D. Create a backup vault by using AWS Backup. Use AWS Backup to create a backup plan for the EC2 instances based on tag values. Define the destination for the copy as us-west-2. Specify the backup schedule to run twice daily.
• E. Create a backup vault by using AWS Backup. Use AWS Backup to create a backup plan for the EC2 instances based on tag values. Specify the backup schedule to run twice daily. Copy on demand to us-west-2.

Correct answer: B, D

Explanation

Options B and D are correct because they leverage native, fully automated cross-region replication features in Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM) and AWS Backup, satisfying the 24-hour RPO with the least management overhead. Options A and E require manual, on-demand copying which increases administrative effort and introduces human error. Option C is incorrect because using a custom AWS Lambda function to copy backups introduces unnecessary administrative and maintenance overhead when AWS Backup has built-in cross-region copying.