DBS-C01 Management and Operations Practice Question
A company's Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL instance is experiencing high CPU utilization. The DB instance is a db.r5.xlarge with 500 GB of General Purpose SSD (gp2) storage. The application team reports that write-intensive batch jobs are causing latency. The DBA notices that the ReadIOPS metric is low but WriteIOPS is consistently near the instance's maximum. Which action would most effectively reduce write latency?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates assume Provisioned IOPS (io1) is always the answer for high IOPS workloads, but the question specifies that WriteIOPS is 'consistently near the instance's maximum' — increasing gp2 storage is a simpler, cost-effective way to raise the IOPS ceiling without changing storage type.
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
✓
Increase the allocated storage to 1,000 GB to increase baseline IOPS.
Increasing the allocated storage for a gp2 volume from 500 GB to 1,000 GB doubles the baseline IOPS from 1,500 to 3,000 (gp2 baseline is 3 IOPS per GB). Since the write-intensive workload is hitting the maximum IOPS of the current volume, this increase directly raises the IOPS ceiling, reducing write latency without changing storage type.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Change the storage type to Provisioned IOPS (io1) with the same IOPS.
Why it's wrong here
While io1 provides consistent IOPS, the question specifies gp2. Changing to io1 would require additional cost but could help, but the most effective immediate action without changing storage type is to increase gp2 storage size.
- ✓
Increase the allocated storage to 1,000 GB to increase baseline IOPS.
Why this is correct
For gp2 volumes, baseline IOPS is 3 per GB, up to 16,000 IOPS. Increasing storage size increases baseline IOPS and burst balance duration, reducing write latency.
- ✗
Add a read replica to distribute read traffic.
Why it's wrong here
Read replicas handle read-only traffic and do not reduce write load on the primary instance.
- ✗
Enable Multi-AZ deployment to offload writes to a standby instance.
Why it's wrong here
Multi-AZ provides high availability and automated failover, but does not improve write performance; writes still go to the primary instance.
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Same concept, more angles
1 more way this is tested on DBS-C01
These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.
Variation 1. A company runs a production Amazon RDS for MySQL Multi-AZ DB instance with 10 TB of storage. The application team notices that database write latency has increased from 5 ms to 80 ms over the past week. The DB instance is a db.r5.8xlarge with 500 GB of gp2 storage. CloudWatch metrics show WriteIOPS averaging 10,000, WriteThroughput at 50 MB/s, and BurstBalance decreasing from 100% to 20% over the same period. The DB instance has no reserved IOPS. The database workload is write-heavy with frequent small transactions. The company needs to resolve the high write latency while minimizing costs and downtime. Which solution should the database specialist recommend?
hard- A.Create a read replica to offload write traffic to the replica and use it for failover.
- B.Upgrade the DB instance to a db.r5.16xlarge with more vCPUs and memory to handle higher write throughput.
- C.Enable Performance Insights to identify slow queries and add database-level caching to reduce write load.
- ✓ D.Modify the DB instance to increase the allocated storage to 1 TB using gp2, allowing the volume to operate with higher baseline IOPS and burst credits.
Why D: Increasing gp2 storage from 500 GB to 1 TB raises the baseline IOPS from 1,500 (3 IOPS/GB) to 3,000, and also increases the burst credit pool size. With WriteIOPS averaging 10,000, the volume is depleting burst credits faster than they can be replenished, causing BurstBalance to drop to 20% and latency to spike. Doubling the storage provides a higher baseline and more credits, reducing reliance on burst and resolving the latency issue without changing instance class or adding cost for reserved IOPS.
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.