The architect exam expects you to know the four main disaster-recovery strategies and the trade-off each makes between cost and recovery speed (RTO/RPO).
The four strategies, cheapest to fastest
Backup & Restore — cheapest, slowest; restore from backups after a disaster. Pilot Light — core systems kept minimally running, scaled up when needed. Warm Standby — a scaled-down full copy always running, scaled up on failover. Multi-Site Active/Active — most expensive, near-zero downtime, full capacity running in multiple Regions.
Test yourself
A business needs near-zero downtime (very low RTO) and can justify the highest cost. Which DR strategy fits?
- Backup & Restore
- Pilot Light
- Warm Standby
- Multi-Site Active/Active
👉 Click to reveal the answer & explanation
Correct answer: D. Multi-Site Active/Active runs full capacity in multiple Regions for near-zero downtime, at the highest cost. Backup & Restore (A) is cheapest but slowest; Pilot Light (B) and Warm Standby (C) trade lower cost for slower recovery than active/active.
Related topics
AWS Backup · Amazon Route 53 · S3 lifecycle & replication
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