SAP-C03 practice question: Multi-Region failover (ARC, Route 53, Global Accelerator, multi-cluster containers) (2 of 2)
Resilience, Migration, and Business Continuity A free question from our original SAP-C03 practice exam. Try it, then open the answer to see why each option is right or wrong.
A streaming service's checkout API runs behind an Application Load Balancer in each of two Regions. The load balancers answer health probes quickly even when the checkout service's downstream payment calls are failing, so customers see errors while the probes report healthy.
The team wants Route 53 to fail over when checkout actually fails, which means the health check must reflect the application's error rate. The health signal must not need custom code that the team has to maintain.
Which solution meets these requirements?
Choose one answer.
AA. Create a Route 53 health check on a CloudWatch alarm that watches the checkout error-rate metric, and attach that health check to the failover records for each Region.
BB. Point the health check at the load balancer's root path on HTTP, and have the path return a static 200 response from the load balancer's listener rule.
CC. Create a TCP health check on the load balancer's listener port, since a TCP connection succeeds whenever the listener is accepting traffic.
DD. Write a Lambda function on a schedule that calls the checkout service, counts the errors and calls the Route 53 API to change the records when the count is high.
Show the answer and explanation
Answer: A
A. Right: Correct. A health check based on a CloudWatch alarm follows the application's own error metric, so failover follows checkout failures and not just load balancer responses. No custom code is needed.
B. Wrong: A static response reports healthy even when the checkout calls fail, which repeats the problem in the question. The health check never sees the application error.
C. Wrong: A successful TCP connection says only that the listener accepts connections. It does not show that checkout is succeeding.
D. Wrong: The function works in principle, but the team would build and maintain the monitoring, the thresholds and the DNS changes. The requirement rules out that custom code.
Explanation
A Route 53 health check that reads a CloudWatch alarm on the checkout error rate reflects the application's real health without custom code. Static responses and TCP checks report healthy during the failures, and a custom function adds code the team must maintain.
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