AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional — Question 495

A company hosts a large on-premises MySQL database at its main office that supports an issue tracking system used by employees around the world. The company already uses AWS for some workloads and has created an Amazon Route 53 entry for the database endpoint that points to the on-premises database.
Management is concerned about the database being a single point of failure and wants a solutions architect to migrate the database to AWS without any data loss or downtime.
Which set of actions should the solutions architect implement?

Answer options

• A. Create an Amazon Aurora DB cluster. Use AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) to do a full load from the on-premises database to Aurora. Update the Route 53 entry for the database to point to the Aurora cluster endpoint, and shut down the on-premises database.
• B. During nonbusiness hours, shut down the on-premises database and create a backup. Restore this backup to an Amazon Aurora DB cluster. When the restoration is complete, update the Route 53 entry for the database to point to the Aurora cluster endpoint, and shut down the on-premises database.
• C. Create an Amazon Aurora DB cluster. Use AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) to do a full load with continuous replication from the on-premises database to Aurora. When the migration is complete, update the Route 53 entry for the database to point to the Aurora cluster endpoint, and shut down the on- premises database.
• D. Create a backup of the database and restore it to an Amazon Aurora multi-master cluster. This Aurora cluster will be in a master-master replication configuration with the on-premises database. Update the Route 53 entry for the database to point to the Aurora cluster endpoint, and shut down the on- premises database.

Correct answer: C

Explanation

To migrate the database to AWS with zero downtime and no data loss, AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) must be used with continuous replication (Change Data Capture) to keep the target Amazon Aurora DB cluster synchronized with the live on-premises database. Options A and B introduce downtime because they do not replicate ongoing transactions during the migration phase. Option D is incorrect because Aurora multi-master clusters do not support master-master replication configurations with external on-premises databases.