AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate (legacy) — Question 7

An AWS CloudFormation template creates an Amazon RDS instance. This template is used to build up development environments as needed and then delete the stack when the environment is no longer required. The RDS-persisted data must be retained for further use, even after the CloudFormation stack is deleted.
How can this be achieved in a reliable and efficient way?

Answer options

• A. Write a script to continue backing up the RDS instance every five minutes
• B. Create an AWS Lambda function to take a snapshot of the RDS instance, and manually execute the function before deleting the stack
• C. Use the Snapshot Deletion Policy in the CloudFormation template definition of the RDS instance
• D. Create a new CloudFormation template to perform backups of the RDS instance, and run this template before deleting the stack

Correct answer: D

Explanation

The correct answer is D because creating a new CloudFormation template specifically for backups allows for a structured approach to preserving data before stack deletion. Options A and B require manual intervention or continuous scripts, which may be error-prone. Option C does not address the need to retain data after stack deletion since the Snapshot Deletion Policy only affects how snapshots are handled when deleting resources, not when the stack itself is removed.