Day 2 - Exam Strategy & Question Patterns — Recognizing Trade-offs, Ruling Out Decoys, Time Management

SAP-C02 is not memorization — it's trade-off judgment under constraints. Most questions hide a hidden constraint (time, budget, regulatory, geographic) that selects one pillar over another.

Pattern recognition:

• "Minimize cost" → Look for cheapest option meeting non-cost constraints
• "No downtime" → RTO=0 → Multi-Site Active-Active, not Pilot Light
• "Regulatory compliance" → Security/Compliance > Cost always
• "Startup, $0 budget" → Serverless autoscale, not provisioned capacity
• "6 months deadline, 100TB" → Rehost first (MGN), Refactor later, not Refactor-all-upfront
• "Global" without region constraints → Assume GDPR/sovereignty applies
• "Audit/compliance" keyword → Imm