AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional SAP-C02 Practice Question

The correct answer is to use Amazon Aurora Global Database and a Warm Standby application tier. Amazon Aurora Global Database is specifically designed for cross-region disaster recovery, providing a typical RPO of under one second and an RTO of under one minute, which precisely meets the stated requirements. The Warm Standby approach for the application tier ensures that a scaled-down but fully functional version of the environment is always running in the DR region, allowing for a rapid failover and scaling to full capacity within the one-minute RTO.

• Using a Pilot Light strategy would not meet the RTO. While the data layer might be replicated, the application infrastructure in the DR region would need to be provisioned and scaled from a minimal state, a process that typically takes several minutes, exceeding the one-minute RTO.

• Implementing a Backup and Restore strategy would fail to meet either the RTO or the RPO. Restoring from backups, even with Cross-Region Replication, is a process that takes hours, not minutes. The RPO would also be, at best, the time between snapshots, which is far greater than one second.

• Using AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (DRS) is a strong but incorrect option. While DRS provides an excellent RPO of seconds by using continuous block-level replication, its RTO is typically in the range of minutes (e.g., 5-20 minutes) because it needs to launch new recovery instances from replicated data. This would not meet the stringent sub-one-minute RTO requirement.