AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) — Question 520

A company wants to use the AWS Cloud to improve its on-premises disaster recovery (DR) configuration. The company's core production business application uses Microsoft SQL Server Standard, which runs on a virtual machine (VM). The application has a recovery point objective (RPO) of 30 seconds or fewer and a recovery time objective (RTO) of 60 minutes. The DR solution needs to minimize costs wherever possible.

Which solution will meet these requirements?

Answer options

• A. Configure a multi-site active/active setup between the on-premises server and AWS by using Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise with Always On availability groups.
• B. Configure a warm standby Amazon RDS for SQL Server database on AWS. Configure AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) to use change data capture (CDC).
• C. Use AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery configured to replicate disk changes to AWS as a pilot light.
• D. Use third-party backup software to capture backups every night. Store a secondary set of backups in Amazon S3.

Correct answer: B

Explanation

Option B is correct because AWS DMS with change data capture (CDC) provides continuous, low-latency replication to a warm standby Amazon RDS for SQL Server database, easily satisfying the 30-second RPO and 60-minute RTO at a minimal cost. Option A is incorrect because upgrading to SQL Server Enterprise for Always On availability groups significantly increases licensing costs. Option D fails to meet the 30-second RPO requirement since backups are only performed nightly.