Management and Operations

A database administrator is troubleshooting an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance that is experiencing high CPU utilization. The administrator runs the following query to find the current running queries: SELECT pid, now() - pg_stat_activity.query_start AS duration, query, state FROM pg_stat_activity WHERE state = 'active'; The output shows a high number of queries with a state of 'active' and durations exceeding several minutes. What should the administrator do FIRST to reduce CPU utilization?

A company is using Amazon RDS for MySQL with a cross-Region read replica to support disaster recovery. The primary DB instance is in us-west-2, and the read replica is in us-east-1. The read replica is used for reporting and also serves as a failover target. The operations team notices that the read replica lag is consistently above 10 seconds during peak hours. What should the team do to reduce replica lag?

An IAM policy is attached to a user who needs to restore an Amazon RDS DB instance from a DB snapshot. The user attempts to restore and receives an 'Access Denied' error. Which missing permission is MOST likely causing the failure?

A developer accidentally deleted a critical table from an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance. Automated backups are enabled with a retention period of 7 days. The deletion occurred 3 hours ago. What is the fastest way to restore the deleted table without affecting other tables?

A company is migrating an on-premises Oracle database to Amazon RDS for Oracle. The database is 2 TB and has a high number of small transactions. The company needs to minimize downtime during the migration. Which TWO strategies should be used together? (Choose two.)

A company is using Amazon ElastiCache for Redis to cache frequently accessed data from an RDS MySQL database. The cache hit ratio is currently 85%. The operations team notices that during traffic spikes, the cache eviction rate increases significantly, and the database CPU utilization spikes. The cache cluster uses a single r6g.large node. Which THREE actions should the team take to improve performance? (Choose three.)

A company runs a critical e-commerce application on Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL with a db.r5.2xlarge instance and 500 GB of gp2 storage. The application experiences periodic write spikes during flash sales. During these events, the WriteIOPS metric exceeds the provisioned baseline IOPS of 1,500, and the database becomes unresponsive for several seconds. The DBA has configured a CloudWatch alarm on WriteIOPS, but the alarm triggers after the performance issue occurs. The company needs to ensure that the database can handle these spikes without downtime. The budget allows for moderate cost increases. What should the DBA do?

Arrange the steps to perform a point-in-time recovery (PITR) for an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance in the correct order.

Arrange the steps to switch over from a primary Amazon RDS for Oracle DB instance to a standby in a Multi-AZ deployment (planned failover) in the correct order.

A company is running an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance. The DB instance is experiencing high CPU utilization due to a sudden increase in read traffic. The company needs to reduce the load on the primary DB instance with minimal downtime. Which solution should be used?

A database administrator needs to monitor the number of connections to an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance. Which Amazon CloudWatch metric should be used?

A company is using Amazon Aurora MySQL-Compatible Edition. The database is experiencing performance degradation due to long-running queries. The DBA needs to identify the queries that are consuming the most resources. Which action should be taken?

A company is running Amazon Redshift for data warehousing. The data warehouse is used for complex analytical queries. Recently, query performance has degraded due to data skew. Which steps should be taken to address this issue?

Which TWO methods can be used to encrypt an existing unencrypted Amazon RDS for Oracle DB instance? (Choose 2.)

A database administrator needs to monitor the number of database connections to an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL instance. Which Amazon CloudWatch metric should the administrator use?

A team is migrating an on-premises Oracle database to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL. The database is 2 TB and has a 6-hour maintenance window. Which AWS service should the team use to minimize downtime?

A company wants to encrypt an existing unencrypted Amazon RDS for SQL Server instance. What is the MOST efficient way to achieve this?

A company needs to audit all SQL queries executed on an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL instance. Which feature should the company enable?

A database administrator runs the above AWS CLI command. What is the purpose of the command?

A company is using Amazon RDS for MySQL with Multi-AZ deployment. The database experiences a failover event, and after failover, the application reports increased latency. Which action should the database specialist take to diagnose the issue?

A company has an Amazon DynamoDB table with on-demand capacity mode. They notice that write requests are being throttled during peak hours. The table has a global secondary index (GSI) that is also throttled. Which action should the database specialist take to resolve the throttling?

A database specialist is troubleshooting a performance issue on an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance. The CPU utilization is consistently above 90%, but the IOPS and memory metrics are well within limits. Which tool should the specialist use to identify the root cause?

A company is migrating an on-premises Oracle database to Amazon RDS for Oracle. Which TWO methods can the database specialist use to minimize downtime during the migration?

A database specialist is troubleshooting a performance issue on an Amazon Aurora MySQL DB cluster. The cluster has a primary instance and two Aurora Replicas. The application is experiencing high read latency. Which THREE actions should the specialist take to identify the cause?

A database specialist sees the above output for an RDS MySQL instance. The application reports that the instance is not accepting writes. What is the most likely cause?

A database specialist sees the above error in the application logs for an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance. The application is a web server running on an EC2 instance. What is the most likely cause?

A company is running an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance. The database performance has degraded over time. The DBA suspects that the issue is due to a high number of connections that are in a 'sleep' state from a legacy application. What is the MOST effective solution to automatically terminate idle connections?

A SysOps administrator is tasked with monitoring the free storage space on all Amazon RDS DB instances. Which AWS service should be used to set up an alarm that sends an email notification when free storage space falls below a threshold?

A company has a production Amazon DynamoDB table with on-demand capacity. The table experiences occasional throttling due to hot partitions. The operations team wants to implement a solution to identify the specific partition keys causing the throttling. What is the MOST efficient approach?

A data engineer is troubleshooting a slow-running query on an Amazon Redshift cluster. The query involves large table joins and aggregations. Which diagnostic step should be taken FIRST to understand the query execution plan and identify bottlenecks?

A company runs an Amazon Aurora MySQL DB cluster with one writer and two readers. The application experiences increased read latency. The DBA wants to offload read traffic from the writer instance. Which configuration change should be made to the application?

A developer needs to restore an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance to a specific point in time within the retention period. What must be enabled for this operation to be possible?

A company is using Amazon DynamoDB with on-demand capacity. The operations team wants to monitor for throttled read requests. Which metric from Amazon CloudWatch should be used to set up an alarm for read throttling?

A company is using a Multi-AZ RDS for MySQL instance. The primary instance recently experienced an unexpected failover, and the application experienced a brief interruption. The database administrator wants to investigate the root cause. Which AWS service should be used to review the failover event and its details?

A company needs to ensure that all changes to an Amazon RDS DB instance's security group are logged for auditing purposes. Which AWS service should be enabled?

A company has a production Amazon Aurora MySQL DB cluster with one writer and two reader instances. The application uses a custom connection pool that uses the writer endpoint for all database calls. The application is experiencing increased latency during peak hours. A database specialist suggests using the reader endpoint for read-only queries. What change is required on the application side to implement this recommendation?

A company has an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance that is running low on storage. The current allocated storage is 500 GB, and the free space is down to 10 GB. The database administrator wants to increase storage with minimal downtime. Which action should be taken?

A company uses Amazon DynamoDB with on-demand capacity mode for a critical application. During a marketing campaign, the application experienced throttled requests despite the on-demand mode. The table has a single partition key. The database specialist notices that the throttling occurs sporadically even though overall traffic is within limits. What is the most likely cause?

A company is migrating an on-premises Oracle database to Amazon RDS for Oracle. The database is 2 TB in size. The company wants to minimize downtime during the migration. Which AWS service should be used to perform an online migration with minimal downtime?

A company is using Amazon DynamoDB with provisioned capacity for a table that experiences unpredictable traffic spikes. The table's read capacity is often underutilized, but occasionally throttling occurs. Which THREE steps should be taken to improve performance and cost? (Choose THREE.)

A company is using Amazon RDS for MariaDB. The database administrator wants to monitor the database for slow queries. Which TWO services can be used to achieve this? (Choose TWO.)

A company is migrating an on-premises Oracle database to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL. The database has several stored procedures that use Oracle-specific PL/SQL. The team needs to minimize manual code changes. Which AWS service or tool should be used to automate the conversion of the stored procedures?

A company has an Amazon DynamoDB table that stores IoT sensor data. The table has a partition key of device_id and a sort key of timestamp. The team wants to efficiently retrieve the latest reading for each device. Which query pattern should be used?

A company is using Amazon DynamoDB with provisioned capacity. The table's read capacity is consistently underutilized, but the write capacity is frequently maxed out. The team wants to optimize costs while maintaining performance. Which TWO actions should be taken?

The exhibit shows the output of an AWS CLI command for an Amazon RDS DB instance. Based on the output, what is the current configuration of the DB instance?

The exhibit shows the output of a MySQL command run on an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance. The database is experiencing frequent checkpointing that is causing I/O spikes. The parameter innodb_log_file_size is currently 256 MB. Which change should be made to reduce checkpoint frequency?

A company is running an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance with Multi-AZ. The database experiences a failover during a maintenance window. After the failover, the application connection pool continues to use the old primary endpoint, causing connection errors. What is the BEST way to ensure application connections automatically redirect to the new primary after a failover?

A company uses Amazon DynamoDB with on-demand capacity for a mobile application. During a marketing campaign, write traffic spikes to 10,000 writes per second for 5 minutes. The application experiences throttling after the first minute. The DynamoDB table has a single partition key. What should be done to prevent throttling in future campaigns?

A company uses Amazon DynamoDB with provisioned capacity for a gaming application. During a new game launch, write traffic spikes to 2x the provisioned write capacity for 30 minutes. Some writes are throttled. The company wants to handle these predictable spikes without manual intervention. What is the MOST cost-effective solution?

A company is migrating an on-premises Oracle database to Amazon RDS for Oracle. During the migration, they need to ensure minimal downtime. Which AWS service should be used for the migration?

A company wants to automate the creation of a new Amazon RDS for SQL Server instance with specific configurations, including VPC, subnet, and security group settings. Which AWS service should be used to deploy this infrastructure as code?

A company uses Amazon RDS for MySQL with read replicas. The application writes to the primary and reads from the replicas. Occasionally, the application reads stale data from the replicas. Which action would ensure read-after-write consistency without impacting write performance?

Which THREE actions can be performed using the AWS CLI for Amazon Aurora? (Choose three.)

A company wants to ensure that their Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL database is automatically backed up every day and retains backups for 30 days. Which configuration should they use?

A company is migrating an on-premises Oracle database to Amazon RDS for Oracle. The database is 500 GB and has a 4-hour downtime window. Which AWS service should be used to perform the migration with minimal downtime?

A company runs a critical Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL database. They notice that the 'DiskQueueDepth' metric is consistently high and the 'FreeStorageSpace' is below 10%. The database is used for OLTP workloads. What is the MOST immediate action to take?

A company is using Amazon ElastiCache for Redis to cache database query results. They notice that the cache hit ratio is low and many requests are hitting the database. The 'Evictions' metric is high. What is the MOST likely cause?

A company wants to automate backups for an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance. The backup retention period should be 35 days. Which step is required?

A company is migrating an on-premises MongoDB database to Amazon DocumentDB. The migration must have minimal downtime. Which THREE steps should be taken? (Choose three.)

A company runs a critical e-commerce application on Amazon RDS for MySQL with Multi-AZ enabled. The database is 2 TB and uses General Purpose (gp2) storage. Recently, during peak hours, the application experienced a 5-minute outage. The CloudWatch logs show that the primary DB instance failed and an automatic failover occurred. However, the failover took 3 minutes, which is longer than the expected 1-2 minutes. The 'ReadLatency' and 'WriteLatency' metrics were elevated before the failure. The 'BurstBalance' metric was at 0% for the hour before the failure. The team suspects the issue is related to storage performance. What should the team do to prevent this issue in the future?

A company runs a production Amazon RDS for MySQL Multi-AZ DB instance. The database experiences a failover event. After the failover, the application team reports increased latency for write operations. Which action should be taken to investigate the issue?

A company uses Amazon DynamoDB to store session data for a web application. The application is experiencing occasional throttling (ProvisionedThroughputExceededException) during peak hours. The DynamoDB table has on-demand capacity mode. Which combination of steps should be taken to resolve the issue?

A database administrator notices that the free storage space on an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance is decreasing rapidly. The instance has automated backups enabled with a retention period of 7 days. Which action should be taken to monitor storage usage and prevent running out of space?

A company uses Amazon DynamoDB with global tables for a multi-region application. The application writes to the table in us-east-1. A developer notices that updates made in us-east-1 are not appearing in the replica in eu-west-1 after several minutes. Which action should be taken to diagnose the issue?

Refer to the exhibit. An IAM policy statement allows creating manual snapshots for an RDS instance. A database administrator is unable to create a snapshot from the AWS Management Console. The error message indicates insufficient permissions. What is the likely cause?

Refer to the exhibit. A database administrator runs the AWS CLI command shown. The output is: ["available", false]. What does this output indicate about the DB instance?

A company runs a production Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance with Multi-AZ. The database is used by a web application. The application team reports that the database is experiencing intermittent connection timeouts and increased latency. The CloudWatch metrics show that the database connections spike to the maximum allowed (max_connections) during peak hours, and the CPU utilization is high. The team needs to resolve the connection issues without modifying the application code. The application uses connection pooling at the application layer. Which action should be taken?

An e-commerce application uses Amazon Aurora MySQL with a Multi-AZ DB cluster. During a recent load test, the application experienced increased read latency. The database cluster consists of one writer and two reader instances. Which THREE actions should be taken to improve read performance?

A company has an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance with automated backups enabled. The retention period is set to 7 days. A developer accidentally performed a DROP TABLE operation on a critical table 2 days ago. How can the table be recovered with minimal data loss?

A company runs an Amazon RDS for SQL Server DB instance in a VPC. The security group for the DB instance allows inbound traffic on port 1433 from the application servers' security group. The application servers can connect to the database, but a database administrator cannot connect from their workstation using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). What is the MOST likely cause?

A database administrator notices that an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance has experienced a failover during a maintenance window. What is the most likely cause of this failover?

A company runs an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance with Multi-AZ enabled. The primary instance is in us-east-1a and the standby is in us-east-1b. During a routine audit, the security team discovers that database connections are being terminated unexpectedly. The database administrator reviews the RDS events and sees an event: 'A Multi-AZ failover has been completed.' What step should be taken to determine the cause of this failover?

A database team is migrating an on-premises Oracle database to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL. The team needs to ensure minimal downtime and data consistency. Which approach should be used?

A company has an Amazon DynamoDB table with on-demand capacity mode. The table experiences a sudden spike in traffic, and the application starts receiving ProvisionedThroughputExceededException errors. What is the most likely cause?

A company is using Amazon RDS for SQL Server with Multi-AZ and automated backups enabled. The database administrator needs to restore the database to a specific point in time that is within the retention period. What is the correct procedure?

An Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance has a high number of connections and the application is experiencing slow response times. The database administrator wants to identify the queries that are causing the most load. Which approach is most effective?

A company is using Amazon DynamoDB with global tables (multi-region) for a gaming application. The application writes to a table in us-east-1 and reads from a table in eu-west-1. The team notices that writes in us-east-1 are taking longer than expected to propagate to eu-west-1. What is the most likely cause?

A company is using Amazon ElastiCache for Redis to cache database query results. The application team reports that cache hit ratio has dropped significantly. What is the first step to investigate?

An Amazon RDS for Oracle DB instance is experiencing high swap usage. The database administrator wants to reduce swap usage. Which action should be taken?

Which TWO actions can be taken to monitor the health of an Amazon DynamoDB table? (Choose 2.)

Which THREE factors should be considered when selecting the backup strategy for an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance? (Choose 3.)

A company is experiencing increased latency on their Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL instance. The application team reports that queries are taking longer than usual. The database metrics show high CPU utilization and a spike in write operations. Which initial step should the database specialist take to diagnose the issue?

A company is running an Amazon DynamoDB table with on-demand capacity mode. The table experiences occasional throttling during peak hours. The application team wants to understand the read/write patterns to optimize the table design. Which approach should the database specialist take to analyze the throttling events?

A company is migrating an on-premises Oracle database to Amazon RDS for Oracle. The database size is 500 GB. The migration must have minimal downtime. Which AWS service should be used to perform the migration?

A database administrator needs to monitor the number of connections to an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance. Which Amazon CloudWatch metric should be used?

A company needs to ensure that all changes to an Amazon RDS DB instance are logged for auditing purposes. Which AWS service should be enabled?

Which TWO of the following are benefits of using Amazon RDS Proxy? (Choose TWO.)

A database administrator is monitoring Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL using CloudWatch. The DB instance shows high CPU utilization, but the number of connections is normal. What is the most likely cause of the high CPU utilization?

A company is using Amazon Redshift for data warehousing. They notice that query performance has degraded over time. The database administrator checks the system tables and finds that there is significant skew in data distribution across slices. What action should be taken to improve query performance?

A company uses Amazon DynamoDB with provisioned capacity. The application team reports occasional ProvisionedThroughputExceededException errors. The database administrator notices that the errors occur during periods of high traffic. What is the most cost-effective way to handle these errors without over-provisioning capacity?

A company is using Amazon Redshift for data warehousing. The database administrator needs to optimize query performance. Which TWO actions should the administrator take? (Choose TWO.)

Refer to the exhibit. A database administrator is writing an IAM policy to manage Amazon RDS snapshots. The policy allows actions on all RDS resources but denies deletion of any DB instance with the prefix 'production-'. A developer attempts to delete a snapshot named 'production-snapshot-2020'. Will this action be allowed?

A company runs an Amazon RDS for MySQL Multi-AZ DB instance. The application experiences intermittent read latency spikes. The DB instance type is db.r5.large with 500 GB of General Purpose SSD (gp2) storage. The spike occurs during peak hours when read activity is high. Which action would most effectively reduce read latency?

A company is using Amazon DynamoDB with on-demand capacity. The application experiences increased latency during peak hours. The DynamoDB table receives about 5,000 writes per second and 10,000 reads per second. The read latency is high, but write latency is acceptable. What should the company do to reduce read latency?

A company is running an Amazon Aurora MySQL-compatible edition DB cluster. The application reports that a recent schema change caused a significant increase in the number of deadlocks. Which parameter should the DBA check and possibly adjust to reduce deadlocks?

A company's RDS for SQL Server instance has been running for 3 years. The DBA notices that the DB instance's allocated storage (500 GB) is 80% full. The application is write-heavy. The DBA needs to increase storage without downtime. What is the most efficient way to achieve this?

Refer to the exhibit. A DBA deploys this CloudFormation stack. After creation, the DBA needs to enable deletion protection for the DB instance. Which modification to the template would accomplish this?

Refer to the exhibit. An RDS for PostgreSQL instance shows frequent checkpoints every 10 seconds. What is the most likely cause?

A company runs an Amazon Aurora MySQL database cluster with one writer and one reader instance. The application experiences intermittent connection timeouts during peak traffic. The DB cluster parameter group has 'connect_timeout' set to 5 seconds. What should a database specialist recommend to reduce connection timeouts?

A developer accidentally deleted a critical table from an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance. Automated backups are enabled with a retention period of 7 days. The deletion occurred 3 hours ago. Which action can restore the table with minimal data loss?

A company is using Amazon Neptune to run graph queries. The cluster has one writer and two reader instances. After a major version upgrade, the query performance degrades for complex traversal queries. The database specialist suspects that the query optimizer is not using indexes effectively. Which action should the specialist take to identify the issue?

A company is migrating an on-premises Oracle database to Amazon RDS for Oracle. The database is 2 TB in size and has a high transaction rate. The migration must have minimal downtime. Which migration strategy should a database specialist recommend?

Which THREE of the following are best practices for managing Amazon DynamoDB tables with provisioned throughput?

A database administrator notices that Amazon RDS for MySQL is experiencing high CPU utilization during peak hours. The application is read-heavy with many SELECT queries. Which action is most cost-effective to improve performance?

A company is using Amazon DynamoDB with Auto Scaling enabled. During a flash sale, write traffic spikes and the application experiences ProvisionedThroughputExceededException errors. The DynamoDB table has provisioned write capacity of 1000 WCU and Auto Scaling is set to scale between 1000 and 10000 WCU. What is the most likely cause of the throttling?

A database administrator is troubleshooting a backup failure for an Amazon RDS for SQL Server DB instance. The error message states 'Insufficient storage capacity for backup. Free storage space is 0 GB.' The DB instance has 200 GB allocated storage. What is the most likely cause?

A company has an Amazon Aurora MySQL DB cluster with a single writer and two readers. The writer instance fails, and the failover mechanism promotes one of the readers to writer. The application, which uses a custom connection pool, continues to experience errors for several minutes. What should the database administrator do to minimize downtime during future failovers?

A company's Amazon RDS for Oracle instance is running out of storage space. The database administrator wants to add storage without downtime. Which action should be taken?

A company is using Amazon DynamoDB with provisioned capacity and Auto Scaling. They notice that during a marketing campaign, write traffic exceeded the provisioned WCU and caused throttling. Auto Scaling increased the WCU, but the throttling persisted for several minutes. Which additional measure can prevent throttling during such predictable spikes?

A company is running an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance. The database performance has degraded over time, and the company suspects that slow queries are the cause. Which AWS service should the company use to identify the slow queries and analyze the database performance?

A company is migrating its on-premises Oracle database to Amazon RDS for Oracle. The database is 2 TB in size and has a 24-hour maintenance window. The company needs to minimize downtime during the migration. Which AWS service should be used to perform the migration with minimal downtime?

A company has a production Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL Multi-AZ DB instance. The company's security team requires that all database connections use IAM database authentication. The company also needs to ensure that connections from a specific application server are allowed only if the server has a valid IAM role. Which combination of steps should the database administrator take to meet these requirements?

A company is running an Amazon RDS for SQL Server DB instance. The company needs to capture changes to a specific table and replicate them to an Amazon S3 bucket in near real time. Which AWS service should be used to achieve this?

A company is using Amazon DynamoDB with on-demand capacity mode. The company notices that during a flash sale, the write requests are throttled. What is the most likely cause of the throttling?

A company is using Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL with read replicas to offload read traffic. The company wants to ensure that the read replicas are always in sync with the primary instance. Which metric should the company monitor to detect replication lag?

A company is deploying an Amazon Aurora MySQL database. The company requires that the database withstand the loss of two copies of data without impacting write availability. Which configuration should the company use?

A company is using Amazon DynamoDB for a gaming application. The application stores player scores in a table with a partition key of player_id and a sort key of timestamp. The company wants to query the top 10 scores for a given player efficiently. Which TWO steps should the company take to optimize this query?

A database engineer is troubleshooting an Amazon Aurora MySQL DB cluster that is experiencing frequent failovers. The failovers are occurring during periods of low write activity. The engineer notices that the primary instance's writer endpoint is being used for read traffic from a legacy application. What is the most likely cause of the failovers?

A company is migrating an on-premises Oracle database to Amazon RDS for Oracle. The database is 500 GB in size and has a 24/7 uptime requirement. The migration window is limited to 2 hours. Which strategy should be used to minimize downtime?

A database administrator needs to track changes to an Amazon RDS DB instance's configuration, such as modifications to the DB instance class or security group. Which AWS service should be used?

A company runs an Amazon Aurora MySQL database. The database experiences a sudden spike in connections and then becomes unresponsive. The DB instance has a db.r5.large class with 8 GB memory. The maximum connections parameter is set to the default. Which is the most likely cause of the unresponsiveness?

A company is running an Amazon RDS for SQL Server instance and wants to automate the patching of the database engine. Which AWS service should be used?

Refer to the exhibit. A database engineer runs the query above to troubleshoot an application error. The query returns no results even though the database is generating errors. What is the most likely reason?

Refer to the exhibit. A database engineer runs the command and receives the above output. The engineer wants to convert the database to Multi-AZ. Which command should be used?

An e-learning platform uses Amazon Aurora MySQL for its database. The application runs reporting queries that scan large portions of the database, causing high CPU utilization on the primary instance. The primary instance is a db.r5.2xlarge with 64 GB memory. The reporting queries are not time-sensitive but need to return results within 5 minutes. The operations team wants to reduce the impact on the primary instance without increasing costs significantly. Which action should be taken?

A company uses Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL with a single-AZ deployment. The operations team needs to ensure that the database is available during a planned maintenance event that requires a reboot. The maintenance window is set for 30 minutes. The database size is 200 GB and the application can tolerate a few minutes of downtime. Which action should the team take to minimize downtime during the reboot?

A company is running an Amazon RDS for MySQL Multi-AZ DB instance. The application experiences a brief write disruption during automatic failover. The database workload has low write latency requirements. Which configuration change would minimize application impact during failover?

A company runs an Amazon Aurora MySQL database with read replicas to handle read traffic. During a recent load test, the primary instance CPU utilization reached 90%, but read replicas remained below 50%. The application uses a custom ORM that connects to a single endpoint. Which change will best distribute read traffic?

A company is migrating an on-premises Oracle database to Amazon RDS for Oracle using AWS DMS. The source database is 2 TB and has high transaction volume. The migration needs minimal downtime. Currently, full load completes but CDC task fails with 'ORA-1555: snapshot too old' errors. What should the DBA do to resolve this?

A company uses Amazon DynamoDB with auto scaling enabled. During a flash sale, write traffic spikes and some requests receive ThrottlingException errors. The table's write capacity auto scaling reaches the maximum configured capacity but still throttles. Which TWO actions should resolve the throttling? (Choose TWO.)

A company runs an Amazon RDS for SQL Server database. The database size is 500 GB. The company needs to create a test environment with a copy of the production database that refreshes daily. Which THREE steps should be taken to automate this? (Choose THREE.)

A financial services company runs a production Amazon Aurora MySQL database cluster (1 writer, 2 readers) in us-east-1. The database stores critical trading data. The company's disaster recovery policy requires an RPO of 5 seconds and an RTO of 1 minute for a regional failure. The current setup does not include any cross-region replication. The database is 5 TB in size. The operations team needs to implement a solution that meets the DR requirements with minimal cost and operational overhead. Which solution should the team implement?

A company runs an Amazon ElastiCache for Redis cluster as a caching layer for a high-traffic web application. The cluster has one primary and two replica nodes. Recently, the application experienced increased latency. Monitoring shows that the CPU utilization of the primary node is consistently above 80%, while replicas are below 40%. The application uses the cluster mode disabled. The operations team needs to reduce the CPU load on the primary node. Which solution should they implement?

A database specialist manages an Amazon Aurora MySQL cluster used for a reporting application. The team needs to run a nightly batch of heavy analytical queries against the cluster without affecting the production writer instance's performance or availability. The batch must read the most current committed data. Which approach should the database specialist use?

A company runs an Amazon Aurora MySQL cluster with two Aurora Replicas. The database specialist must ensure that read-only application queries are distributed evenly across the replicas and that a replica failure does not interrupt reads. Which approach should the specialist use?

A database specialist needs to enforce that all data stored in an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance is encrypted at rest using a customer managed AWS KMS key rather than the default AWS managed key. The instance was created without encryption. Which action should the database specialist take?

A company runs an Amazon Aurora MySQL cluster with a writer instance and two reader instances. The database specialist needs to ensure that automated backups are retained for 14 days, but the current backup retention period is 7 days. The specialist modifies the retention period to 14 days using the AWS Management Console. What is the immediate effect of this change?

A database specialist manages an Amazon RDS for SQL Server Multi-AZ instance. The company requires that all backups be encrypted at rest with a customer-managed AWS KMS key. The specialist enabled encryption at rest when creating the instance, but now needs to change the KMS key due to a key rotation policy. What is the correct approach?

A database specialist is managing an Amazon RDS for SQL Server DB instance with Multi-AZ enabled. The specialist needs to perform a minor version upgrade during a maintenance window. The upgrade requires a failover to the standby instance. What is the expected behavior during this operation?

A database specialist is responsible for an Amazon Aurora MySQL cluster that supports a high-traffic e-commerce application. The cluster has one writer and three reader instances. The specialist needs to implement a monitoring solution that provides real-time metrics on the number of active connections, CPU utilization, and replica lag for each instance, and must trigger an alarm if replica lag exceeds 100 milliseconds. Which AWS service should the specialist use to meet these requirements with the LEAST operational overhead?

A company uses Amazon DynamoDB with a table that has a global secondary index (GSI). The GSI is experiencing throttling events. The database specialist needs to identify the cause. Which action should be taken?

A database specialist manages an Amazon Aurora MySQL cluster that contains a writer instance and two reader instances. The team wants read-only connections distributed automatically across the two reader instances and wants unhealthy readers removed from rotation without any application-side changes. Which solution should the specialist implement?

A company runs an Amazon DynamoDB table for an order-processing application. The operations team wants to be notified automatically when the table's consumed read or write capacity approaches the provisioned limits so they can react before throttling affects customers. Which solution should a database specialist implement?

A company runs an Amazon DynamoDB table with provisioned capacity. The table has a global secondary index (GSI) with its own provisioned throughput. The application team reports that write operations to the base table are succeeding, but some queries against the GSI are returning ProvisionedThroughputExceededException errors. The database specialist needs to resolve the issue with minimal application changes. What should the specialist do?

A database specialist is managing an Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL cluster. The cluster is experiencing performance degradation during peak hours. The specialist needs to identify the top SQL statements contributing to the load. Which two actions should be taken to gather this information? (Choose two.)

A company runs an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance in a private subnet. A database specialist must ensure that automated backups are retained for 35 days and that point-in-time recovery is available for the maximum supported window. What should the specialist do?

A database specialist manages an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance that is encrypted with an AWS KMS customer managed key. A security policy requires that the key be rotated annually. The specialist rotates the KMS key. What is the effect on the existing RDS instance and its encrypted data?

A database specialist manages an Amazon Aurora MySQL cluster that serves an internal reporting application. The security team wants a monthly record of who connected to the database, from which client host, and when the connection succeeded or failed, without modifying the application or enabling extended logging that increases storage costs. The cluster already publishes logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs. Which action should the specialist take to capture this information with the LEAST operational effort?

A company runs an Amazon RDS for SQL Server DB instance. The database specialist needs to ensure that automated backups are retained for 30 days. What should the specialist do?

A database specialist is designing disaster recovery for an Amazon RDS for MySQL production instance. The business requires a recovery point objective of 5 minutes and a recovery time objective of 30 minutes in a different AWS Region. The team has already configured automated backups with a 7-day retention period and a read replica in the same Region. Which configuration change will meet BOTH objectives?

A company runs an Amazon DynamoDB table that stores session data with a TTL attribute configured. A database specialist notices that expired items are still returned by GetItem and Query operations hours after their expiration timestamps. The table has provisioned capacity with plenty of unused write capacity. What is the MOST likely explanation and the appropriate action?

A database specialist is managing an Amazon Aurora MySQL cluster. The cluster has one writer and two readers. During a heavy reporting workload, the specialist notices that read replicas are falling behind the writer, causing stale reads. The specialist wants to monitor replication lag and receive an alert when lag exceeds 30 seconds. Which CloudWatch metric should be used?

A company uses Amazon DynamoDB with a table that has a global secondary index (GSI). The application team reports that writes to the base table occasionally fail with ProvisionedThroughputExceededException, even though the base table's write capacity seems sufficient. The GSI uses provisioned capacity. What is the most likely cause and the correct remediation?

A database specialist needs to monitor the performance of an Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL cluster and identify the top SQL statements by total time. Which AWS tool provides this information with minimal setup?

A company uses Amazon ElastiCache for Redis with cluster mode enabled. The database specialist needs to add a new shard to the cluster to increase capacity. The cluster currently has three shards, each with one primary and one replica. What is the correct procedure to add a shard without downtime?

A company runs an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance in a production environment. The database specialist needs to ensure that the automated backups are retained for 30 days to meet compliance requirements. The DB instance is currently configured with a backup retention period of 7 days. What should the specialist do to meet this requirement with the least operational overhead?

A company uses Amazon DynamoDB for a high-traffic application. The database specialist needs to monitor the table's performance and set up alerts for potential issues. The specialist wants to track consumed capacity and throttled requests. Which two metrics should the specialist monitor in Amazon CloudWatch? (Choose two.)

A database specialist supports an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance in a production account. Auditors require that every administrative action performed on the DB instance, including API calls made by IAM users and roles, is recorded and retained for 400 days, and that the records cannot be altered or deleted by any user, including the root user. Which combination of steps should the specialist take to meet these requirements?

A company runs an Amazon DynamoDB table with provisioned capacity and a global secondary index (GSI). The table experiences sudden spikes in write traffic, causing throttling on the GSI. The database specialist needs to reduce throttling on the GSI. (Choose two.)

A database specialist is managing an Amazon DynamoDB table with a global secondary index (GSI). The table has a provisioned capacity mode with auto scaling enabled. The specialist notices that write operations to the base table are being throttled, even though the base table's write capacity is sufficient. What is the most likely cause?

A database specialist manages an Amazon DynamoDB table for a retail application. The table uses provisioned capacity mode and stores point-in-time recovery backups. A new compliance rule requires that a copy of the table's data be retained for seven years in a cost-effective storage tier, and that the copy must be queryable with Amazon Athena without loading it into another database. Which solution should the specialist implement?

A database specialist is managing an Amazon Redshift cluster. The cluster has a leader node and two compute nodes. The specialist needs to add a new column to a large fact table that is used in complex analytical queries. The table has a distribution key and sort key defined. The specialist wants to minimize the impact on query performance and avoid unnecessary data movement. Which approach should be taken?

A database specialist manages an Amazon DynamoDB table that stores session data. The table has a Time to Live (TTL) attribute configured. The specialist notices that expired items are still appearing in queries several days after their expiration time. What is the most likely reason for this behavior?

A company runs a production Amazon Aurora MySQL cluster. The database specialist must ensure that automated backups are retained for 35 days. The current backup retention period is 7 days. The specialist modifies the DB cluster's backup retention period to 35 days using the AWS CLI. What is the immediate effect of this change on existing automated backups?

A database specialist needs to monitor the CPU utilization of an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance and receive an alert when it exceeds 80% for 5 minutes. Which AWS service should be used to set up this alarm?

A database specialist needs to monitor the number of write capacity units consumed by an Amazon DynamoDB table. The specialist wants to receive an alert when the consumed write capacity exceeds 80% of the provisioned capacity for 5 consecutive minutes. What should the specialist do?

A company uses Amazon ElastiCache for Redis to cache session data for a web application. The cluster is configured with cluster mode disabled and has one primary node and two replica nodes. The database specialist needs to ensure that the cache remains available if the primary node fails. The specialist also wants to minimize data loss. Which configuration should the specialist use?

A company runs an Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL DB cluster. The database specialist needs to perform a point-in-time restore to recover from accidental data deletion. The cluster has a backup retention period of 7 days. What is the most recent time to which the cluster can be restored?

A database specialist manages an Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL cluster. The company requires point-in-time recovery capability for up to 30 days. The specialist needs to configure the backup retention period. Which action should be taken?

A database specialist manages an Amazon Redshift cluster for a data analytics team. The cluster contains a large fact table that is loaded nightly and queried heavily during business hours. The team reports that queries scanning the fact table have degraded over time, and the specialist observes that VACUUM operations have not completed for several days because they are being interrupted. Which action should the specialist take to improve query performance while minimizing disruption to the nightly load and daytime queries?

A company uses Amazon DynamoDB to store session data for a globally distributed web application. The table is configured with on-demand capacity mode and has a single global secondary index (GSI) to support queries by user ID. The application team reports that during peak hours, some queries on the GSI return incomplete results. The database specialist needs to ensure that the GSI provides complete results. What is the most likely cause of the incomplete results?

A database specialist must grant an application running on Amazon EC2 permission to call the rds:CreateDBSnapshot and rds:DescribeDBSnapshots API actions on a specific Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance only, using temporary credentials. The application must not be able to modify or delete any DB instance. Which combination of steps should the specialist take to meet these requirements with least privilege?

A database specialist manages an Amazon Aurora MySQL cluster used for a reporting workload. The team wants to identify which SQL statements consumed the most total time over the past week so they can optimize the offending queries. The cluster has Performance Insights enabled with a retention period of 7 days. Which combination of tools should the specialist use to accomplish this with the LEAST operational overhead?

A database specialist manages an Amazon Aurora MySQL cluster that supports a read-heavy web application. The application connects to the cluster writer endpoint, and the specialist wants to distribute read-only queries to Aurora Replicas. The application uses a MySQL Connector/J driver and the specialist wants to minimize code changes. Which approach should the specialist take?

A database specialist manages an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance with a read replica in the same AWS Region. The replica is used for read-heavy reporting. The specialist notices that the replica lag has been steadily increasing over the past hour and wants to identify the cause. Which action should the specialist take FIRST to diagnose the issue?

A company runs an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance with a 1 TB General Purpose SSD (gp2) volume. The database specialist notices that the storage throughput is insufficient during peak hours, causing elevated latency. The specialist wants to increase the storage throughput without increasing the storage size. What should the specialist do?

A company uses Amazon DynamoDB for an order-processing application. The operations team wants to be notified whenever write capacity consumption on a specific table exceeds a defined threshold for five consecutive minutes. The team has already enabled DynamoDB metrics in Amazon CloudWatch. What is the MOST operationally efficient way to implement this alerting?

A database specialist is deploying an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance in a production environment. The company requires that the database be highly available and automatically fail over to a standby in case of an availability zone outage. The specialist enables Multi-AZ deployment. Which statement accurately describes the behavior of the standby instance in this configuration?

A database specialist is responsible for an Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL cluster that supports a production application. The compliance policy requires that all data be encrypted at rest with a customer-managed AWS KMS key so the security team can rotate and revoke access independently. The cluster was originally created with the default AWS-managed key for encryption. Which action should the specialist take to meet the policy with the LEAST disruption?

A database specialist is managing an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance that is experiencing performance issues. The specialist suspects that recent changes to the application are causing increased load. The specialist needs to identify the top SQL statements consuming the most time and resources. Which two actions should the specialist take to gather the necessary performance data? (Choose two.)

A company runs an Amazon RDS for SQL Server DB instance in a single Availability Zone. The business requires the database to survive an Availability Zone failure with automatic failover and minimal downtime. Which change should the database specialist make to the DB instance?

A database specialist is managing an Amazon DynamoDB table that stores session data. The table has a primary key consisting of a partition key (SessionId) and a sort key (Timestamp). The application frequently queries for the most recent session data for a given SessionId. The specialist wants to optimize the table to reduce the amount of data read during these queries. What should the specialist do?

A database specialist needs to migrate a 2 TB on-premises MySQL database to Amazon RDS for MySQL with minimal downtime. The database is constantly updated. Which AWS service should the specialist use to perform the migration?

A database specialist manages an Amazon Aurora MySQL cluster that serves a read-heavy reporting application. The team needs to add a new Aurora Replica to the cluster and wants the replica to be automatically promoted if the primary writer instance fails. The specialist must also minimize the time the new replica takes to become available. Which action should the specialist take?

A database specialist manages an Amazon DynamoDB table that stores session data. The table uses provisioned capacity and has a Global Secondary Index (GSI). The application team reports that writes to the base table succeed, but updates to indexed attributes occasionally cause the GSI to throttle even though the base table has spare capacity. Which action should the specialist take to resolve the GSI throttling?

A database specialist manages an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance in a production environment. The instance is configured with a 7-day backup retention period. The security team requires that all database backups be encrypted with a customer-managed AWS KMS key, and that the key be rotated annually. Currently, the DB instance uses the default AWS-managed key for encryption. What should the specialist do to meet these requirements?

A database specialist needs to schedule an automated daily backup of an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance and retain the backups for 35 days. The specialist wants the backups to be managed by RDS with no manual intervention. Which action should the specialist take?

A company runs an Amazon Aurora MySQL cluster with a writer and two reader instances. The database specialist needs to implement a monitoring solution that captures detailed query-level performance metrics and identifies slow queries without impacting production performance. The solution must provide historical data for trend analysis. Which TWO actions should the specialist take to meet these requirements? (Choose two.)

A database specialist is configuring an Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL cluster for a production workload. The specialist must ensure that the cluster can recover from an Availability Zone failure and that read traffic is distributed across multiple replicas without application changes. Which two actions should the specialist take? (Choose two.)

A database specialist is managing an Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL cluster with a writer and a reader instance. The application uses the writer endpoint for writes and the reader endpoint for reads. During a recent incident, the writer instance failed over to the reader, causing a brief outage. The specialist needs to ensure that the application automatically reconnects to the new writer after a failover with minimal disruption. What should the specialist do?