DBS-C01 Workload-Specific Database Design Practice Question
A company uses Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL to run a reporting application. The reporting queries are complex and take several minutes to complete, causing performance impact on the primary instance. The company wants to isolate the reporting workload without data staleness. Which solution should they implement?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse the Multi-AZ standby instance as usable for read traffic, but AWS explicitly prevents read access to the standby to maintain crash recovery consistency, whereas a read replica is purpose-built for offloading read workloads.
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 a read replica and direct reporting queries to it.
Creating a read replica of the Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL primary instance allows you to offload complex reporting queries to the replica without impacting the primary. Read replicas use asynchronous replication (based on PostgreSQL streaming replication), which provides near-real-time data with minimal staleness, satisfying the requirement to isolate the reporting workload without significant data staleness.
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 an Amazon ElastiCache cluster to cache query results.
Why it's wrong here
Caching may not be effective for complex, ad-hoc queries.
- ✗
Enable Multi-AZ and use the standby instance for reporting.
Why it's wrong here
The standby instance in Multi-AZ is not accessible for reads.
- ✗
Take a manual snapshot of the database and restore it for reporting.
Why it's wrong here
Snapshots are static and not real-time.
- ✓
Create a read replica and direct reporting queries to it.
Why this is correct
Read replicas offload read traffic and are updated asynchronously.
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