DBS-C01 Workload-Specific Database Design Practice Question
A company uses Amazon RDS for Oracle for an OLTP application. The database experiences high CPU utilization during peak hours. The application is read-heavy and can tolerate eventually consistent reads. Which solution reduces CPU load on the primary database with minimal application changes?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers assume caching (ElastiCache or DAX) is the only way to reduce read load, but they overlook that RDS Read Replicas directly offload the database engine’s CPU without requiring application caching logic or a different database service.
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 an RDS read replica and direct read traffic to it
Creating an RDS Read Replica offloads read traffic from the primary Oracle instance, directly reducing CPU utilization on the primary. Since the application is read-heavy and tolerates eventually consistent reads, the replica’s asynchronous replication lag is acceptable. This solution requires minimal application changes—only modifying the connection string to route SELECT queries to the replica endpoint.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Implement Amazon ElastiCache to cache frequent queries
Why it's wrong here
ElastiCache requires application changes to implement caching logic.
- ✗
Upgrade to a larger instance type
Why it's wrong here
Vertical scaling increases capacity but does not offload reads.
- ✓
Create an RDS read replica and direct read traffic to it
Why this is correct
Read replicas offload read traffic from the primary, reducing CPU load with minimal application changes.
- ✗
Use DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) as a cache layer
Why it's wrong here
DAX is for DynamoDB, not RDS.
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