AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) — Question 613

A company wants to migrate its on-premises Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise edition database to AWS. The company's online application uses the database to process transactions. The data analysis team uses the same production database to run reports for analytical processing. The company wants to reduce operational overhead by moving to managed services wherever possible.

Which solution will meet these requirements with the LEAST operational overhead?

Answer options

• A. Migrate to Amazon RDS for Microsoft SOL Server. Use read replicas for reporting purposes
• B. Migrate to Microsoft SQL Server on Amazon EC2. Use Always On read replicas for reporting purposes
• C. Migrate to Amazon DynamoDB. Use DynamoDB on-demand replicas for reporting purposes
• D. Migrate to Amazon Aurora MySQL. Use Aurora read replicas for reporting purposes

Correct answer: A

Explanation

Amazon RDS for Microsoft SQL Server is a fully managed service that supports read replicas for Enterprise edition, which minimizes operational overhead while offloading reporting queries from the primary transactional database. Running SQL Server on Amazon EC2 increases administrative overhead because the customer must manage OS and DB patching, backups, and high availability. Migrating to alternative database engines like Amazon DynamoDB or Amazon Aurora MySQL would require significant schema conversion and application refactoring effort, thereby increasing operational overhead.