DBS-C01 Workload-Specific Database Design Practice Question
A company uses Amazon Aurora MySQL for its online transaction processing (OLTP) application. Recently, read traffic has increased significantly, causing performance issues. The company wants to offload read traffic with minimal application changes. Which solution should they implement?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers confuse Multi-AZ with read scaling, assuming the standby instance can serve reads, but in standard RDS Multi-AZ the standby is not active for reads unless using Aurora's Multi-AZ with reader endpoint, which is actually an Aurora Replica feature.
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
✓
Create one or more Aurora Replicas
Aurora Replicas are designed specifically to offload read traffic from the primary Aurora instance with minimal application changes. They connect to the same shared storage volume as the primary, so replication is nearly instantaneous and requires no additional storage overhead. The application can use the Aurora reader endpoint to distribute read queries across up to 15 low-latency replicas.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Enable Multi-AZ deployment
Why it's wrong here
Multi-AZ provides failover, not read scaling.
- ✓
Create one or more Aurora Replicas
Why this is correct
Aurora Replicas are read-only copies that offload read traffic.
- ✗
Migrate to Amazon DynamoDB
Why it's wrong here
Migrating to DynamoDB would require significant application redesign.
- ✗
Add an Amazon ElastiCache cluster in front of Aurora
Why it's wrong here
ElastiCache requires application code changes to implement caching logic.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
One of 1,663 original DBS-C01 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. 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.