During a disaster recovery test, an Amazon RDS for MySQL database must be restored from automated backups, and the team measures how long the restore takes before the application can reconnect. They find the elapsed restore-and-warm-up time exceeds the agreed limit. In recovery objective terms, which measure are they failing to satisfy?
- AThe recovery point objective, which sets the maximum amount of data the business is willing to lose measured backwards from the failure.
- BThe retention period, which defines how many days of automated backups RDS keeps available for restore operations.
- CThe recovery time objective, which sets the maximum acceptable duration between the failure and the service being usable again. Correct
- DThe backup window, which is the daily span during which RDS takes the automated snapshot of the database instance.
Why A is wrong: Recovery point objective bounds data loss, not duration, so a slow restore does not breach it as long as the recovered data is recent enough to meet the loss limit.
Why B is wrong: Retention period controls how far back you can restore, not how long the restore itself runs, so it is unrelated to the elapsed restore-and-warm-up time being too long.
Why C is correct: Recovery time objective is the agreed ceiling on how long recovery may take, so an elapsed restore that exceeds the limit is precisely a breach of the recovery time objective.
Why D is wrong: The backup window only governs when snapshots are taken each day and has no bearing on the time a restore takes once a recovery has been triggered.