DBS-C01 Monitoring and Troubleshooting Practice Question
A company is using Amazon RDS for MySQL and notices that the Read IOPS metric is consistently high during business hours. The application is read-heavy. Which configuration change would most likely reduce Read IOPS?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse Multi-AZ with read replicas, assuming a standby instance can handle read traffic, but in RDS for MySQL, Multi-AZ standby is passive and does not serve reads.
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 one or more read replicas and redirect read traffic to them.
Creating read replicas offloads read queries from the primary DB instance to replica instances, directly reducing the number of read I/O operations on the primary. Since the application is read-heavy and Read IOPS is high during business hours, distributing read traffic to replicas alleviates the I/O bottleneck on the primary instance without requiring a larger instance or storage changes.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Add a Multi-AZ standby instance.
Why it's wrong here
A Multi-AZ standby is for high availability and disaster recovery, not for read offloading.
- ✓
Create one or more read replicas and redirect read traffic to them.
Why this is correct
Read replicas handle read queries from the primary, reducing read IOPS on the source instance.
- ✗
Increase the DB instance size to a larger instance type.
Why it's wrong here
Increasing instance size may improve throughput but does not directly reduce the number of read IOPS; the workload remains.
- ✗
Enable storage Auto Scaling on the RDS instance.
Why it's wrong here
Storage Auto Scaling only adjusts storage capacity, not IOPS.
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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.