AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) — Question 971

A company runs a global web application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The application stores data in Amazon Aurora. The company needs to create a disaster recovery solution and can tolerate up to 30 minutes of downtime and potential data loss. The solution does not need to handle the load when the primary infrastructure is healthy.

What should a solutions architect do to meet these requirements?

Answer options

• A. Deploy the application with the required infrastructure elements in place. Use Amazon Route 53 to configure active-passive failover. Create an Aurora Replica in a second AWS Region.
• B. Host a scaled-down deployment of the application in a second AWS Region. Use Amazon Route 53 to configure active-active failover. Create an Aurora Replica in the second Region.
• C. Replicate the primary infrastructure in a second AWS Region. Use Amazon Route 53 to configure active-active failover. Create an Aurora database that is restored from the latest snapshot.
• D. Back up data with AWS Backup. Use the backup to create the required infrastructure in a second AWS Region. Use Amazon Route 53 to configure active-passive failover. Create an Aurora second primary instance in the second Region.

Correct answer: A

Explanation

An active-passive failover configuration using Amazon Route 53 combined with a cross-region Aurora Replica perfectly aligns with a Pilot Light or Warm Standby disaster recovery strategy, satisfying the 30-minute RTO and RPO requirements. Active-active configurations (Options B and C) are unnecessary and introduce extra costs because the secondary site does not need to handle active traffic during normal operations. Restoring databases from backups or snapshots (Options C and D) would take too long and likely exceed the strict 30-minute downtime limit.