DEA-C01 Data Store Management Practice Question
A company has an Amazon RDS for MySQL database that is experiencing performance issues due to a large number of read requests. The application is read-heavy and can tolerate eventually consistent reads. Which action will reduce the load on the primary database with the least operational overhead?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse Multi-AZ (which only provides failover, not read scaling) with read replicas, or assume that ElastiCache is always the best caching solution without considering the operational overhead of code changes and cache management.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Create a read replica in the same region
Creating a read replica in the same region offloads read traffic from the primary RDS instance to a read-only copy, which directly addresses the read-heavy workload. Since the application can tolerate eventually consistent reads, the slight replication lag is acceptable, and this solution requires minimal operational overhead—just a few clicks in the AWS console or a single API call—without any application code changes.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Create a read replica in the same region
Why this is correct
Offloads read traffic with minimal overhead.
- ✗
Use Amazon ElastiCache for caching
Why it's wrong here
Requires application changes and may not cover all queries.
- ✗
Enable Multi-AZ deployment
Why it's wrong here
Multi-AZ provides failover, not read scaling.
- ✗
Increase the instance size of the primary DB
Why it's wrong here
Scales up but doesn't offload read traffic.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DEA-C01 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the DEA-C01 exam.