SAP-C02 Question 49
Select 3A company is running a multi-tier web application using Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB) across multiple Availability Zones. The database layer is hosted on an Amazon RDS for MySQL instance. The company wants to ensure high availability and minimize downtime in the event of any regional failure. What steps should the company take to improve the architecture?
- A
Enable Multi-AZ for the Amazon RDS instance to provide automatic failover to a standby instance in another Availability Zone.
- B
Add a second Application Load Balancer in another AWS Region and configure it for cross-region load balancing.
- C
Use AWS Global Accelerator to route traffic across multiple AWS Regions for better fault tolerance.
- D
Set up Amazon RDS Read Replicas in multiple AWS Regions and promote a read replica to master in the event of a regional outage.
- E
Configure the Auto Scaling group to span multiple AWS Regions for cross-region failover.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answers: A, C, D
Explanation
To ensure high availability and minimize downtime in the event of a regional failure, the company should implement a multi-region architecture. Enabling Multi-AZ for Amazon RDS increases availability within the same region. AWS Global Accelerator provides a global fault-tolerant routing mechanism, and setting up RDS Read Replicas in multiple regions ensures database redundancy. These measures collectively help the company achieve its goal of minimizing downtime during a regional failure.
- A. Correct.
Enabling Multi-AZ for RDS ensures automatic failover to a standby replica in another Availability Zone within the same region, increasing the database layer's high availability. However, it does not address regional failures.
- B. Incorrect.
Adding a second Application Load Balancer does not inherently provide cross-region failover or high availability. ALBs are confined to a single region and cannot span multiple AWS Regions.
- C. Correct.
Using AWS Global Accelerator can improve fault tolerance by providing a single static entry point and routing traffic to the optimal endpoint across multiple AWS Regions.
- D. Correct.
Setting up Amazon RDS Read Replicas in multiple regions allows for regional redundancy. In the event of a regional failure, a read replica in another region can be promoted to master to restore database functionality.
- E. Incorrect.
Auto Scaling groups cannot span multiple AWS Regions. They are designed for scaling within a single region across multiple Availability Zones.