DBS-C01 Management and Operations Practice Question
A company runs a critical e-commerce application on Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL with a db.r5.2xlarge instance and 500 GB of gp2 storage. The application experiences periodic write spikes during flash sales. During these events, the WriteIOPS metric exceeds the provisioned baseline IOPS of 1,500, and the database becomes unresponsive for several seconds. The DBA has configured a CloudWatch alarm on WriteIOPS, but the alarm triggers after the performance issue occurs. The company needs to ensure that the database can handle these spikes without downtime. The budget allows for moderate cost increases. What should the DBA do?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often assume increasing gp2 storage (Option A) is the only way to raise baseline IOPS, overlooking gp3's ability to provision higher IOPS independently without massive storage growth.
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
✓
Modify the DB instance to use gp3 storage with provisioned IOPS of 5,000.
Gp3 storage provides a baseline of 3,000 IOPS regardless of storage size, and allows provisioning up to 16,000 IOPS independently. By setting provisioned IOPS to 5,000, the database can handle write spikes without exceeding the IOPS limit, preventing unresponsiveness. This solution fits the moderate cost increase budget, as gp3 is typically 20% cheaper than gp2 for equivalent performance.
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 allocated storage to 1,000 GB to increase baseline IOPS to 3,000.
Why it's wrong here
While this increases baseline IOPS, it is less cost-effective than gp3 and does not provide the ability to provision higher IOPS without additional storage.
- ✓
Modify the DB instance to use gp3 storage with provisioned IOPS of 5,000.
Why this is correct
gp3 provides a baseline of 3,000 IOPS for any storage size and allows provisioning additional IOPS up to 16,000, independent of storage. This handles write spikes cost-effectively.
- ✗
Enable Performance Insights to identify the problematic queries and tune them.
Why it's wrong here
Performance Insights is a monitoring tool, not a solution for IOPS spikes; it does not increase IOPS capacity.
- ✗
Add a read replica and redirect read traffic to it to reduce write contention.
Why it's wrong here
Read replicas handle read traffic only; they do not reduce write load on the primary instance.
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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.