A web app uses an EC2-hosted MySQL database. The administrator must reduce potential data loss and recovery time if the database server fails, while minimizing operational effort. Which solution is the most operationally efficient?

Migrating to Amazon RDS for MySQL with Multi-AZ deployment is the most operationally efficient solution because RDS automates backups, patching, and failover, significantly reducing operational overhead. Multi-AZ ensures high availability and automatic failover to a standby replica in case of an outage, minimizing data loss and recovery time. Restoring from an existing MySQL-native backup in S3 allows for data migration to the new RDS instance. Creating a CloudWatch alarm to stop and start the EC2 instance only addresses instance-level failures, not data corruption or underlying hardware issues, and doesn't provide high availability. Using a Single-AZ RDS with a read replica doesn't offer automatic failover for the primary instance, requiring manual intervention and longer recovery times. Scheduling EBS snapshots provides point-in-time recovery but requires manual restoration and configuration, which is less efficient than RDS Multi-AZ.