HashiCorp Vault Associate (003) Question 223
Single answer8d Explain the uses of disaster recovery and performance replicationA company runs Vault Enterprise in a single primary datacenter and serves applications from multiple regions. The security team wants to improve read scalability for regional clients without allowing those regions to modify Vault data independently. They also want a standby environment in a secondary datacenter that can be promoted if the primary datacenter is lost. Which replication design best meets these requirements?
- A
Configure performance replication for the regional clusters and disaster recovery replication for the secondary datacenter.
- B
Configure disaster recovery replication for the regional clusters and performance replication for the secondary datacenter.
- C
Configure only performance replication everywhere, because it provides both read scaling and automatic disaster failover.
- D
Configure only disaster recovery replication everywhere, because DR secondaries can serve normal client read traffic in each region.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
The key distinction is purpose: performance replication is used to scale Vault deployments and reduce latency for distributed users and applications by letting additional clusters handle client requests, while disaster recovery replication is used to maintain a secondary cluster that can be promoted if the primary fails. In HashiCorp Vault Enterprise guidance, performance replication addresses scale/performance and geographic distribution, whereas DR replication addresses business continuity and recovery. In this scenario, the company has two separate needs, so the best design is to use performance replication for regional client-serving clusters and disaster recovery replication for the standby datacenter.
- A. Correct.
Correct. Performance replication is intended to scale Vault horizontally across regions by allowing local clusters to service client requests while replicating data from the primary. Disaster recovery replication is intended to maintain a warm standby copy in another location that can be promoted if the primary cluster is unavailable. This combination matches the stated goals: regional read/service scalability plus a recoverable standby site.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. This reverses the intended use cases. Disaster recovery replication is not designed to provide normal active regional service for scaling client traffic; it is a standby copy for failover. Performance replication is for serving application traffic from multiple regions, not for maintaining a passive failover target as the main DR design.
- C. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Performance replication improves scale and locality of service, but it is not the same as using disaster recovery replication for a standby cluster that is specifically designed for promotion during a primary-site loss. Choosing only performance replication confuses scale-out with DR planning.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Disaster recovery secondaries are not meant to act as active regional clusters for normal client traffic distribution. They are standby clusters that receive replicated state and are promoted during a disaster scenario. Using only DR replication would not satisfy the requirement to improve regional service scalability.