DBS-C01 Management and Operations Practice Question
A company recently migrated an on-premises PostgreSQL database to Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. The database is 100 GB and used by a web application. After migration, the application's response time increased. The 'ReadLatency' and 'WriteLatency' metrics are normal. The 'CPUUtilization' is at 90%. The 'DatabaseConnections' metric shows 200 connections, which is close to the max connections for the instance class (db.t3.medium, max connections = 200). The application uses connection pooling. The team wants to reduce CPU utilization without changing the application code. Which action should the team take?
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
✓
Upgrade the DB instance to a larger class like db.t3.large.
Upgrading to a larger instance class, such as db.t3.large, provides more CPU resources (additional vCPUs), directly addressing the high CPU utilization (90%) while maintaining the same number of database connections. Option A is incorrect because decreasing 'max_connections' to 100 risks rejecting legitimate connections from the application's connection pool, potentially causing errors even though connection pooling is in use. Option B is incorrect because increasing allocated storage improves I/O throughput but does not reduce CPU utilization; the I/O latency metrics are already normal. Option D is incorrect because enabling Performance Insights adds monitoring overhead and switching to Provisioned IOPS improves I/O performance, but the bottleneck is CPU, not I/O.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Decrease 'max_connections' parameter to 100.
Why it's wrong here
Reducing max connections may cause application errors if more connections are needed.
- ✗
Increase allocated storage to 200 GB.
Why it's wrong here
Storage increase does not directly reduce CPU utilization.
- ✓
Upgrade the DB instance to a larger class like db.t3.large.
Why this is correct
A larger instance class provides more CPU cores and higher performance.
- ✗
Enable Performance Insights and switch to Provisioned IOPS.
Why it's wrong here
Provisioned IOPS improves I/O but CPU is the bottleneck.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every DBS-C01 question from scratch — 1,663 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or 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.