SAP-C02 Practice Question 75: Aurora Global Database Switchover Rehearsal

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C02) · Test 8 · question 5 of 10

Design for New Solutionshard

A bank runs an Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL global database with the primary cluster in us-east-1 and a secondary cluster in eu-west-1. A regulator requires the bank to operate the database from the secondary Region for a defined period every quarter to prove its disaster recovery procedure works, and then to return to the original Region. Both Regions are healthy during the exercise, no committed transaction may be lost, and the global database should keep its two-Region topology throughout.

Which approach should the solutions architect recommend?

Show answer and explanation

Answer:

A. Perform a switchover of the global database to the eu-west-1 cluster, then switch back to us-east-1 after the exercise

AWS distinguishes the two operations. A switchover (previously "managed planned failover") is *"for controlled scenarios, such as operational maintenance and other planned operational procedures where all the Aurora clusters and other services they interact with are in a healthy state."* *"Because this feature synchronizes secondary DB clusters with the primary before making any other changes, RPO is 0 (no data loss)."* Its listed use cases include *"regional rotation"* requirements imposed on industries such as financial services, and it *"maintains your global database's existing replication topology"*. After the exercise, another switchover returns the primary to us-east-1 (option A).

- B is wrong because failover is for unplanned outages and does not wait for replication, so it *"can result in a loss of write transaction data"*. That violates the no-loss requirement. - C is wrong because detaching a secondary is the manual failover procedure. It breaks replication and tears down the global topology that the bank wants to keep. - D is wrong because a snapshot restore takes far longer than a switchover, loses transactions made after the snapshot, and would not exercise the global database at all.

Reference: Using switchover or failover in Amazon Aurora Global Database

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