DBS-C01 Monitoring and Troubleshooting Practice Question
A company is using Amazon RDS for MySQL with Multi-AZ deployment. The application team reports increased latency during peak hours. Which AWS service should the database specialist use to identify the root cause?
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 for the RDS instance and analyze the database load.
Performance Insights provides detailed database performance metrics and helps identify bottlenecks such as high load or slow queries. Option B is wrong because AWS Config tracks configuration changes, not performance. Option C is wrong because CloudWatch Metrics Dashboard shows aggregated metrics but lacks the granular database analysis needed for root cause identification. Option D is wrong because Amazon Inspector is a security assessment tool, not a performance monitoring service.
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 Performance Insights for the RDS instance and analyze the database load.
Why this is correct
Performance Insights provides detailed database performance analysis and helps identify bottlenecks.
- ✗
Enable AWS Config to track configuration changes to the RDS instance.
Why it's wrong here
AWS Config is for resource configuration auditing, not performance analysis.
- ✗
Use the CloudWatch Metrics Dashboard to analyze database connections.
Why it's wrong here
CloudWatch Metrics Dashboard shows aggregated metrics but not detailed database performance.
- ✗
Run an Amazon Inspector assessment on the RDS instance.
Why it's wrong here
Amazon Inspector is for security assessments, not performance monitoring.
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Same concept, more angles
2 more ways this is tested on DBS-C01
These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.
Variation 1. A company is running a production Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance. The application team reports intermittent high latency and connection timeouts. A quick check shows that the DB instance's CPU utilization is consistently above 90% during peak hours. The database size is 500 GB and the instance class is db.r5.large. Which combination of actions should a database specialist take to resolve the performance issue?
medium- A.Increase the allocated storage to 1 TB and enable auto-scaling for storage.
- ✓ B.Scale up the DB instance to db.r5.xlarge and review slow query logs to optimize poorly performing queries.
- C.Enable Multi-AZ and increase the allocated storage to 1 TB to improve I/O performance.
- D.Enable Performance Insights and create a CloudWatch alarm to notify when CPU exceeds 80%.
Why B: Scaling up the DB instance to db.r5.xlarge provides more compute capacity, directly addressing high CPU utilization. Additionally, reviewing slow query logs helps identify and optimize inefficient queries that may be causing CPU spikes. Option A is incorrect because increasing storage does not improve CPU performance; it only addresses storage capacity or I/O issues. Option C is incorrect because enabling Multi-AZ provides high availability but does not increase compute capacity, and increasing storage does not help with CPU. Option D is incorrect because Performance Insights helps diagnose performance issues but does not resolve them, and CloudWatch alarms only provide notifications without fixing the underlying problem.
Variation 2. A company is running a production Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance. The application team reports intermittent connection timeouts. The DBA notices that the DB instance's CPU utilization spikes to 100% during these times. Which metric should be monitored to determine if the issue is due to a specific query?
medium- A.DatabaseConnections
- B.NetworkThroughput
- C.ReadIOPS
- ✓ D.Queries (engine-specific counter)
Why D: The RDS for MySQL engine-specific counter 'Queries' reflects the number of queries executed. Option A is wrong because DatabaseConnections shows connections, not query performance. Option B is wrong because ReadIOPS measures disk I/O, not query volume. Option C is wrong because NetworkThroughput measures network traffic.
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.