AWS Certified Solutions Architect – ProfessionalDesign for New SolutionsMedium
A large enterprise is migrating a critical, highly transactional legacy application to AWS. The application uses a relational database that experiences peak loads of 20,000 transactions per second (TPS) and has a strict requirement for single-digit millisecond latency for all read and write operations. Data consistency is paramount, and the database must be globally distributed with active-active replication to support rapid failover across multiple AWS Regions. Which AWS database service is most suitable for these requirements?
- AAmazon Aurora Global Database for MySQL.
- BAmazon RDS for MySQL with Multi-AZ deployment.
- CAmazon DynamoDB Global Tables.
- DAmazon Aurora PostgreSQL with read replicas.
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: A. Amazon Aurora Global Database for MySQL.
Amazon Aurora Global Database is designed for globally distributed applications that require low latency, high availability, and rapid disaster recovery across multiple AWS Regions. It provides fast cross-Region replication with typical latencies under one second and can scale to millions of transactions per second, meeting the stringent performance and consistency requirements.
Why the other options are wrong
- B. Amazon RDS Multi-AZ provides high availability within a single region but does not offer active-active replication or rapid failover across multiple AWS Regions for disaster recovery, nor does it inherently scale to 20,000 TPS with single-digit latency for all operations without significant sharding or complex architectural patterns.
- C. DynamoDB Global Tables provide active-active multi-Region replication and low latency, but it is a NoSQL database, which may require significant application re-architecture for a relational legacy application and does not guarantee strict transactional consistency (ACID) in the same way a relational database does by default across globally distributed writes without careful application-level design.
- D. Aurora PostgreSQL offers high performance but read replicas are eventually consistent and do not provide active-active write capability across regions, failing the global distribution with active-active replication requirement.
Aurora Global Database
A feature of Amazon Aurora that allows a single Aurora database to span multiple AWS Regions, enabling fast local reads, rapid disaster recovery, and global active-active read scaling with low replication lag.
- Cross-Region replication with typical latencies under one second.
- Designed for global applications requiring low latency and high availability.
- Supports planned failover to a secondary region in under a minute.
- Scales to millions of transactions per second.
Memory trick: Globally spread your data, keep it snappy and safe.