DBS-C01 Monitoring and Troubleshooting Practice Question
A company is using Amazon RDS for MySQL and notices that database connections are being rejected intermittently. The application logs show 'Too many connections' errors. The DB instance has 1000 max_connections. Which action should the DBA take to troubleshoot and resolve this issue without impacting performance?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers assume increasing max_connections or lowering timeouts is a quick fix, but AWS tests the ability to diagnose first using monitoring tools (Performance Insights) before making configuration changes that could harm performance or availability.
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 the 'DB Connections' metric to identify spikes and troubleshoot application connection pooling
Enabling Performance Insights allows the DBA to monitor the 'DB Connections' metric in near real-time, identify exactly when connection spikes occur, and correlate those spikes with application behavior. This diagnostic approach pinpoints the root cause—such as a connection leak or insufficient connection pooling—without making changes that could degrade performance. Increasing max_connections or lowering wait_timeout without understanding the usage pattern can lead to resource exhaustion or premature connection termination.
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 max_connections parameter to 5000 in the DB parameter group
Why it's wrong here
Increasing max_connections can cause memory pressure and performance degradation.
- ✗
Create a read replica to offload read traffic
Why it's wrong here
Read replicas do not reduce the number of connections to the primary instance.
- ✓
Enable Performance Insights and review the 'DB Connections' metric to identify spikes and troubleshoot application connection pooling
Why this is correct
Performance Insights helps identify the source of connection bursts and allows tuning of the application's connection pooling behavior.
- ✗
Set the 'wait_timeout' parameter to a lower value to close idle connections faster
Why it's wrong here
Reducing wait_timeout may cause active queries to be terminated prematurely.
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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.