DEA-C01 Data Operations and Support Practice Question
A data engineer notices that an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL instance's CPU utilization is consistently above 90% during business hours. The database is used for reporting queries. Which action should be taken FIRST to improve performance?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates often jump to scaling solutions (like increasing instance size or adding a read replica) without first diagnosing the root cause, but AWS emphasizes observability and optimization before capacity changes.
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
✓
Enable Performance Insights and review slow queries.
The first step in diagnosing high CPU utilization on an RDS for PostgreSQL instance used for reporting queries is to identify the root cause. Enabling Performance Insights provides a detailed view of database load, wait events, and SQL query performance, allowing the data engineer to pinpoint slow or inefficient queries that are consuming CPU resources. Without this diagnostic data, any other action would be premature and could lead to unnecessary cost or complexity.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Enable Multi-AZ deployment for automatic failover.
Why it's wrong here
Multi-AZ does not improve performance.
- ✓
Enable Performance Insights and review slow queries.
Why this is correct
Identifying and optimizing slow queries reduces CPU usage.
- ✗
Create a read replica to offload reporting queries.
Why it's wrong here
Read replicas reduce read load but not CPU of the primary instance.
- ✗
Increase the instance size to a larger instance class.
Why it's wrong here
Scaling up is a temporary fix; better to optimize queries first.
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JA
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.