DBS-C01 Management and Operations Practice Question
A company runs a production Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL instance with Multi-AZ deployment. The DB instance has a large number of connections from application servers. The operations team wants to monitor the number of database connections and receive an alert when it exceeds 80% of the maximum connections. Which combination of steps should be taken to set up this monitoring? (Choose two.)
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
✓
Set the alarm threshold to (0.8 * max_connections) and the evaluation period to 1 minute
Correct answers are C and D. C: Set the alarm threshold to (0.8 * max_connections) and the evaluation period to 1 minute ensures the alarm triggers when connections reach 80% of the maximum. D: Create a CloudWatch alarm on the 'DatabaseConnections' metric for the RDS instance to monitor the actual number of connections. A is wrong because the threshold should be based on max_connections, not a fixed value of 80. B is wrong because Enhanced Monitoring provides OS-level metrics, not database connection counts. E is wrong because Performance Insights provides DBLoad, not connection counts.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Set the alarm threshold to 80 and the evaluation period to 5 minutes
Why it's wrong here
The threshold should be based on the actual max_connections, not a fixed number.
- ✗
Enable Enhanced Monitoring and create a CloudWatch alarm on the 'database_connections' metric
Why it's wrong here
Enhanced Monitoring provides OS-level metrics, not DB connection count.
- ✓
Set the alarm threshold to (0.8 * max_connections) and the evaluation period to 1 minute
Why this is correct
This ensures the alarm triggers when connections exceed 80% of the maximum.
- ✓
Create a CloudWatch alarm on the 'DatabaseConnections' metric for the RDS instance
Why this is correct
DatabaseConnections is a standard RDS CloudWatch metric.
- ✗
Enable Performance Insights and create a CloudWatch alarm using the 'DBLoad' metric
Why it's wrong here
DBLoad is a Performance Insights metric, not a connection count.
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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.