DBS-C01 Monitoring and Troubleshooting Practice Question
A company is using Amazon RDS for MySQL with Multi-AZ deployment. The database experiences a sudden increase in latency and the application reports timeouts. CloudWatch shows elevated 'ReadLatency' and 'WriteLatency' metrics, while 'CPUUtilization' and 'DatabaseConnections' remain normal. Which is the MOST likely 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
✓
A large transaction is being processed
A large transaction can cause increased latency without high CPU or connection count, as it may be waiting on disk I/O or replication. Option A is wrong because a runaway query consuming CPU would show elevated CPUUtilization, which is normal. Option B is wrong because a Multi-AZ failover would cause a brief spike in latency followed by recovery, not sustained latency. Option D is wrong because insufficient provisioned IOPS would typically show BurstBalance or IOPS metrics, not just ReadLatency and WriteLatency.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
A runaway query is consuming CPU resources
Why it's wrong here
Runaway query would increase CPUUtilization, which is normal here.
- ✗
A Multi-AZ failover occurred
Why it's wrong here
Failover typically results in a brief outage then recovery, not sustained latency with normal CPU.
- ✓
A large transaction is being processed
Why this is correct
Large transactions can cause high I/O wait and latency without high CPU or connections.
- ✗
The database has insufficient provisioned IOPS
Why it's wrong here
Insufficient IOPS would show low 'BurstBalance' or throttling, not just latency.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
This DBS-C01 question is part of Courseiva's 1,663-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
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.