DEA-C01 Data Store Management Practice Question

A data engineer is troubleshooting an Amazon RDS for MySQL instance that is experiencing high read latency. The instance is a Single-AZ db.r5.large with 100 GB of General Purpose (gp2) storage. Which action is most likely to reduce read latency?

⚠ Common exam trap

Test-takers frequently confuse Multi-AZ with read replicas, assuming Multi-AZ provides read scaling, but Multi-AZ only provides a standby for failover, not a read endpoint.

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 and direct read queries to it.

Creating a read replica offloads SELECT queries from the primary instance, directly reducing the read load and thus read latency. Since the instance is Single-AZ and experiencing high read latency, a read replica distributes the read traffic without altering the existing storage or availability configuration.

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 and direct read queries to it.
Why this is correct
Offloads read traffic, reducing load on the primary.
✗
Enable automatic backups with a 7-day retention.
Why it's wrong here
Backups do not affect read latency.
✗
Increase the allocated storage to 200 GB.
Why it's wrong here
Increases baseline IOPS but does not directly reduce latency.
✗
Convert the instance to a Multi-AZ deployment.
Why it's wrong here
Multi-AZ improves availability, not read performance.

Go deeper

DEA-C01 Data Store Management Practice Question

Why each option matters

Option-by-option breakdown

Related to this question