AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02)Cloud ConceptsHard
A company's architecture team decides to deploy an application across three Availability Zones with duplicated databases and load balancers to maximize fault tolerance. The finance team notes this design significantly increases monthly AWS spending compared to a single-AZ deployment. This scenario best illustrates a trade-off between which two Well-Architected Framework pillars?
- AOperational Excellence and Security
- BSecurity and Sustainability
- CPerformance Efficiency and Operational Excellence
- DReliability and Cost Optimization
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: D. Reliability and Cost Optimization
Increasing redundancy across multiple Availability Zones improves the Reliability pillar by reducing single points of failure, but it increases costs, which conflicts with the goals of the Cost Optimization pillar; organizations must balance these competing priorities based on business needs.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Operational Excellence and Security are not the primary pillars affected by this redundancy decision.
- B. Security and Sustainability are not directly in tension in this scenario, which is about redundancy versus spending.
- C. Performance Efficiency and Operational Excellence are not the pillars in direct conflict here; the tension is about cost versus resilience.
Well-Architected Pillar Trade-offs
A recognition that the six Well-Architected Framework pillars can sometimes conflict, requiring organizations to balance priorities such as reliability versus cost based on business needs.
- Multi-AZ redundancy boosts reliability but raises cost
- Pillars are not always mutually reinforcing
- Business context determines acceptable trade-offs
Memory trick: More 9s of uptime often means more $ spent.