AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) — Question 531

A company wants to provide data scientists with near real-time read-only access to the company's production Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL database. The database is currently configured as a Single-AZ database. The data scientists use complex queries that will not affect the production database. The company needs a solution that is highly available.

Which solution will meet these requirements MOST cost-effectively?

Answer options

• A. Scale the existing production database in a maintenance window to provide enough power for the data scientists.
• B. Change the setup from a Single-AZ to a Multi-AZ instance deployment with a larger secondary standby instance. Provide the data scientists access to the secondary instance.
• C. Change the setup from a Single-AZ to a Multi-AZ instance deployment. Provide two additional read replicas for the data scientists.
• D. Change the setup from a Single-AZ to a Multi-AZ cluster deployment with two readable standby instances. Provide read endpoints to the data scientists.

Correct answer: D

Explanation

An Amazon RDS Multi-AZ DB cluster deployment provides high availability with one primary and two readable standby instances, making it highly cost-effective since the standby instances can handle read traffic without requiring extra read replicas. Standard Multi-AZ instance deployments (Option B and C) do not allow reads on the standby instance, meaning Option C would require purchasing extra read replicas, which is more expensive. Option A fails to provide high availability and does not isolate the production workload from complex analytical queries.