AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate / Question #1300 of 1019

Question #1300

A company uses Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL for their critical application. Following an audit, they must ensure a recovery point objective (RPO) of less than 1 second. Which solution fulfills this requirement?

A

Configure the RDS instance with a Multi-AZ deployment.

B

Create a read replica in a different Availability Zone and configure automatic failover.

C

Enable continuous transaction log archiving to Amazon S3 with 1-second intervals.

D

Use automated backups with a backup interval set to 1 second.

Explanation

Answer A is correct because Multi-AZ deployments for Amazon RDS PostgreSQL maintain a synchronous standby replica in a different Availability Zone. All database writes are replicated synchronously, ensuring the standby is always up-to-date. This guarantees a recovery point objective (RPO) of less than 1 second during outages.

Other options are incorrect because:
- B: Read replicas use asynchronous replication, risking data loss exceeding 1 second.
- C: Transaction log archiving at 1-second intervals still allows up to 1 second of data loss.
- D: Automated backups cannot be configured at 1-second intervals; they are periodic (daily) with transaction logs stored every 5 minutes.

Key Points:
1. Multi-AZ = synchronous replication → RPO <1s.
2. Read replicas (async) ≠ RPO compliance.
3. Transaction logs/backups have inherent delays.

Answer

The correct answer is: A