DBS-C01 Monitoring and Troubleshooting Practice Question
A company uses Amazon RDS for SQL Server with Multi-AZ deployment. During a failover test, the application experienced a longer downtime than expected. Which monitoring metric should be reviewed to understand the failover duration?
⚠ Common exam trap
Beware of non-existent metrics. 'FailoverTime' sounds plausible but is not a CloudWatch metric. The actual metric is 'Failover' (count).
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
✓
DatabaseConnections
The DatabaseConnections metric in Amazon CloudWatch tracks the number of active database connections. During a Multi-AZ failover, existing connections are dropped and new connections are blocked until the standby becomes the primary. By monitoring the time period when DatabaseConnections drops to zero or a low value, you can estimate the failover duration. Options A (FailoverTime) is not a valid CloudWatch metric for RDS; the actual metric is 'Failover' which is a count, not a duration. WriteLatency may increase during failover but does not directly measure downtime. ReplicaLag applies to read replicas, not Multi-AZ failover.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
FailoverTime
Why it's wrong here
FailoverTime is not a real CloudWatch metric for RDS. The actual metric is 'Failover' (a count), not a duration metric, so it cannot be used to measure failover time.
- ✗
WriteLatency
Why it's wrong here
WriteLatency measures the average latency of write operations. While it may spike during a failover, it does not directly indicate the duration of downtime.
- ✓
DatabaseConnections
Why this is correct
DatabaseConnections reflects the number of active connections. During a failover, connections are lost and then re-established. The period of low or zero connections approximates the failover duration, making it the best metric among the options.
- ✗
ReplicaLag
Why it's wrong here
ReplicaLag is used for read replicas to measure the delay between the primary and a replica. For Multi-AZ, the standby is synchronous and no ReplicaLag metric is available; it is not relevant for failover duration.
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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.