DBS-C01 Workload-Specific Database Design Practice Question
A company uses Amazon RDS for Oracle with a Multi-AZ deployment for a critical OLTP application. During a recent failover test, they noticed that the application experienced a two-minute downtime. The team wants to reduce downtime to under 30 seconds during automatic failovers. What should they do?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates assume reducing DNS TTL (Option B) will solve the problem, but they overlook that the primary bottleneck in RDS for Oracle failover is the database promotion and recovery time, not just DNS caching.
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
✓
Migrate to Amazon Aurora with Multi-AZ and use the Aurora auto-failover feature
Amazon Aurora with Multi-AZ provides faster failover than RDS for Oracle because Aurora uses a shared storage architecture and a cluster endpoint that automatically redirects traffic to the replica within 30 seconds, often in as little as 15 seconds. In contrast, RDS for Oracle Multi-AZ relies on DNS record updates and a standby instance that must be promoted, which typically takes 60–120 seconds. Migrating to Aurora eliminates the DNS propagation delay and the need for storage failover, meeting the sub-30-second requirement.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Add a read replica to offload reads
Why it's wrong here
Read replicas do not reduce failover time.
- ✗
Reduce the DNS TTL value to 5 seconds
Why it's wrong here
DNS TTL affects client DNS caching but the failover time is dominated by database recovery, not DNS.
- ✗
Enable Automatic Failover in the RDS console
Why it's wrong here
Automatic failover is already enabled in Multi-AZ deployments.
- ✓
Migrate to Amazon Aurora with Multi-AZ and use the Aurora auto-failover feature
Why this is correct
Aurora failover is typically under 30 seconds, and it provides faster recovery than RDS Multi-AZ.
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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.