AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03)Design Resilient ArchitecturesHard

A company is building a highly available and fault-tolerant application that spans multiple AWS Regions. They need to ensure that database changes in the primary region are replicated to a secondary region with minimal latency and recovery point objective (RPO). The database is currently Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL-compatible. Which feature should be implemented?

  1. ACross-Region Read Replicas
  2. BDatabase Migration Service (DMS)
  3. CAurora Global Database
  4. DMulti-AZ Deployment
Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: C. Aurora Global Database

Aurora Global Database is designed for globally distributed applications, enabling a single Aurora database to span multiple AWS Regions. It uses dedicated infrastructure to replicate data with typical latency of less than one second, providing fast disaster recovery with a low RPO (Recovery Point Objective) in case of a regional outage.

Why the other options are wrong

  • A. Cross-Region Read Replicas are for read scaling and disaster recovery but have higher replication lag than Global Database and require manual promotion.
  • B. DMS is for migrating databases, not for continuous, low-latency cross-region replication for high availability/DR.
  • D. Multi-AZ deployment provides high availability within a single region, not across multiple regions.

Aurora Global Database

An Amazon Aurora feature that allows a single Aurora database to span multiple AWS Regions. It uses dedicated storage-level replication to achieve typical cross-region replication latency of less than one second, enabling fast disaster recovery.

  • Designed for global applications and disaster recovery.
  • Low RPO (Recovery Point Objective) and RTO (Recovery Time Objective).
  • Primary region handles writes, secondary regions serve as read replicas.
  • Supports fast failover to a secondary region in case of primary region outage.

Memory trick: Global DB: Aurora's World Tour for DR.

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