DBS-C01 Management and Operations Practice Question
A company runs a production Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance with Multi-AZ. The database is used by a web application. The application team reports that the database is experiencing intermittent connection timeouts and increased latency. The CloudWatch metrics show that the database connections spike to the maximum allowed (max_connections) during peak hours, and the CPU utilization is high. The team needs to resolve the connection issues without modifying the application code. The application uses connection pooling at the application layer. Which action should be taken?
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
✓
Deploy an Amazon RDS Proxy in front of the DB instance.
RDS Proxy manages connection pooling efficiently, reducing the number of connections to the database and lowering CPU overhead. Option A is wrong because read replicas do not reduce write connection load. Option C is wrong because increasing max_connections may lead to resource exhaustion. Option D is wrong because switching to a smaller instance would worsen the problem.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Create a read replica and direct read queries to it.
Why it's wrong here
Creating a read replica does not address the connection limit issue; it offloads read queries but does not reduce the number of connections to the primary instance. The problem is connection timeouts due to max_connections being reached, so read replicas do not help with that.
- ✓
Deploy an Amazon RDS Proxy in front of the DB instance.
Why this is correct
Amazon RDS Proxy efficiently manages connection pooling, reducing the number of connections to the database and lowering CPU overhead, thus resolving connection timeouts without code changes.
- ✗
Increase the 'max_connections' parameter to allow more connections.
Why it's wrong here
Increasing the max_connections parameter may temporarily alleviate the connection limit but can lead to resource exhaustion and increased CPU usage, making the problem worse. It also does not address the root cause of connection spikes.
- ✗
Change the DB instance class to a smaller size to reduce the maximum connections.
Why it's wrong here
Changing to a smaller instance class would reduce maximum connections and CPU capacity, exacerbating the problem.
Visual reference
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.