Service Comparison

Multi-AZ vs Read Replica

High availability and read scaling are different goals.

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
Multi-AZ	Failover availability	Standby/cluster failover for outage resilience	Usually not used for read scaling depending on engine
Read replica	Read scaling and reporting	Offload reads, DR option, cross-Region possible	Promotion/failover behavior depends on service

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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