Cloud Engineer interview question · Most asked
What do Multi-AZ deployments and read replicas give you for managed databases?
Summary
Multi-AZ (zone-redundant HA) keeps a synchronous standby in another zone and fails over automatically: it's for availability. Read replicas are asynchronous copies for scaling reads and reporting, and can be promoted; they may lag. Neither replaces backups, because bad writes are replicated.
Longer Answer
Read-your-own-writes requires reading from the primary after writing. Cross-region replicas or global databases support DR.
Key Points
- Multi-AZ: synchronous, availability.
- Replicas: asynchronous, read scaling.
- Replication lag matters.
- Still need backups.
Deep dive: Cloud Computing Tutorial: Managed Relational Databases
Explanation
What interviewers look for
Clear purposes and limitations.
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