A company needs a backup strategy for a three-tier stateless web application. The web tier runs on EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group with dynamic scaling. The database tier runs on Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. The web application does not require temporary local storage on the EC2 instances. The recovery point objective (RPO) is 2 hours. The backup strategy must maximize scalability and optimize resource utilization. Which solution will meet these requirements?

The correct solution leverages AMIs for the stateless web tier and automated RDS backups for the database. Since the web application is stateless and doesn't require temporary local storage, AMIs are an efficient way to back up the EC2 instance configuration. When combined with an Auto Scaling group, new instances can be launched quickly from the latest AMI. Automated RDS backups with point-in-time recovery (PITR) meet the 2-hour RPO for the database, allowing restoration to any second within the retention period. Taking EBS snapshots of EC2 instances is less efficient for stateless, auto-scaled instances, as the instances themselves are ephemeral, and the data is not persistent on their EBS volumes. EBS snapshots are more appropriate for persistent data on individual instances. While EBS snapshots can be part of a backup strategy, relying solely on them for stateless web servers in an Auto Scaling group is not optimal for scalability and resource utilization.