You have an EC2 Instance in a particular region. This EC2 Instance has a preconfigured software running on it. You have been requested to create a disaster recovery solution in case the instance in the region fails. Which of the following is the best solution?

Answer options:

A.Create a duplicate EC2 Instance in another AZ. Keep it in the shutdown state. When required, bring it back up.
B.Backup the EBS data volume. If the instance fails, bring up a new EC2 instance and attach the volume.
C.Store the EC2 data on S3. If the instance fails, bring up a new EC2 instance and restore the data from S3.
D.Create an AMI of the EC2 Instance and copy it to another region.

Answer - D
You can copy an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) within or across an AWS region using the AWS Management Console, the AWS command-line tools or SDKs, or the Amazon EC2 API, all of which support the CopyImage action. You can copy both Amazon EBS-backed AMIs and instance store-backed AMIs. You can copy AMIs with encrypted snapshots and encrypted AMIs.
Copying a source AMI results in an identical but distinct target AMI with its own unique identifier. In the case of an Amazon EBS-backed AMI, each of its backing snapshots is, by default, copied to an identical but distinct target snapshot.
Option A is invalid because it is a maintenance overhead to maintain another non-running instance.
Option B is invalid because the preconfigured software could have settings on the root volume.
Option C is invalid because this is a long and inefficient way to restore a failed instance.
For more information on Copying AMIs, please visit the below URL-
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/CopyingAMIs.html