AWS Solutions Architect Associate Practice Test

What feature does Amazon RDS provide to enhance data availability?

1. Auto-scaling

2. Multi-AZ deployments

3. Load balancing

4. Content Delivery Network

The correct answer is: Multi-AZ deployments

Amazon RDS offers Multi-AZ deployments as a feature designed specifically to enhance data availability and ensure higher resilience. When using Multi-AZ, automated failover mechanisms are in place, allowing the database to quickly switch to a standby instance in a different Availability Zone in the event of an issue with the primary instance. This setup not only provides high availability but also improves durability since updates and changes are synchronized across both instances. In a Multi-AZ configuration, the primary instance handles all the database write operations and replicates the data to the standby instance. This is particularly beneficial for disaster recovery scenarios, ensuring that even if one Availability Zone experiences an outage, the database remains accessible from a healthy standby. Despite the availability of other features like auto-scaling, load balancing, and Content Delivery Networks, these do not directly address the need for data availability in the same context as Multi-AZ deployments. Auto-scaling pertains to managing increased load by automatically adjusting the resources allocated, while load balancing distributes incoming traffic across multiple instances to improve performance and gain fault tolerance. A Content Delivery Network primarily accelerates the delivery of static content and data to users, not the database itself.