Service Comparison

Backup vs Replication

Backups help restore. Replication keeps another copy synchronized for availability or DR.

What They Have in Common

Each option can solve part of the scenario. The exam expects you to choose the one that satisfies the stated constraints with the right operational burden, security boundary, availability model, and cost behavior.

Key Differences

Option	Primary model	Best use	Security	Availability	Operations and cost
Backup	Point-in-time recovery	Recover deletion, corruption, ransomware, audit retention	Restore time can be significant
Replication	Ongoing copy	Lower RPO, regional resilience, read locality	Can replicate bad writes unless paired with versioning/backups

Typical Exam Clues

Practice After Studying

Return to the certification guide that includes this comparison and launch domain training from there.

Sources and Review Metadata

AWS service documentation https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ Reviewed 2026-08-07

AWS Well-Architected Framework https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/framework/welcome.html Reviewed 2026-08-07

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