DBS-C01 Monitoring and Troubleshooting Practice Question
A company is running Amazon RDS for MySQL and notices that the database CPU utilization is consistently above 80% during peak hours. The application performance is degrading. Which action should be taken first to troubleshoot the issue?
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 to identify the queries causing high CPU usage.
Enabling Performance Insights provides detailed analysis of database performance, helping to identify the root cause of high CPU utilization. Option A is wrong because increasing instance size without understanding the cause may lead to unnecessary costs. Option B is wrong because creating a read replica does not directly address CPU utilization on the primary instance. Option D is wrong because switching to a different database engine is a major change and not a troubleshooting step.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Increase the instance size of the RDS instance immediately.
Why it's wrong here
Scaling up without understanding the root cause may lead to unnecessary costs.
- ✗
Create a read replica to offload read traffic.
Why it's wrong here
Read replicas do not reduce CPU load on the primary instance.
- ✓
Enable Performance Insights to identify the queries causing high CPU usage.
Why this is correct
Performance Insights helps identify performance bottlenecks.
- ✗
Switch the database engine to Amazon Aurora for better performance.
Why it's wrong here
Migrating to Aurora is a significant change, not a first troubleshooting step.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DBS-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 DBS-C01 exam.