DBS-C01 Workload-Specific Database Design Practice Question
A company has an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL instance that is running out of storage. The database is 2 TB in size and growing at 10 GB per day. They need a solution that allows automatic storage scaling with minimal downtime. What should they do?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse storage scaling with compute scaling or failover strategies, assuming that a read replica or snapshot restore is required for storage growth, when RDS Storage Auto Scaling handles it automatically and transparently.
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 Storage Auto Scaling
Amazon RDS Storage Auto Scaling automatically increases storage when free space drops below a threshold, with no downtime. For a 2 TB database growing at 10 GB/day, this feature dynamically adds storage in predefined increments (e.g., 5 GB, 10 GB, or 10% of current storage) up to the maximum limit, preventing manual intervention. This directly addresses the requirement for automatic scaling with minimal disruption.
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 Storage Auto Scaling
Why this is correct
Automatically scales storage with no downtime.
- ✗
Purchase reserved instances for cost savings
Why it's wrong here
Does not address storage shortage.
- ✗
Create a read replica and promote it
Why it's wrong here
Doesn't solve storage growth.
- ✗
Take a manual snapshot and restore to a larger instance
Why it's wrong here
Causes downtime during restore.
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