DBS-C01 Management and Operations Practice Question
A database administrator needs to monitor the number of database connections to an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL instance. Which Amazon CloudWatch metric should the administrator use?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse the metric name with generic terms like 'ActiveConnections' or 'ConnectionsCount', which sound plausible but are not the exact CloudWatch metric name published by RDS, leading them to pick a non-existent metric.
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 correct metric is `DatabaseConnections`, which is published by Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL to CloudWatch. It reports the number of client network connections to the database instance, corresponding to the `numbackends` value from the `pg_stat_database` view. This metric directly reflects the current connection count and is the standard way to monitor connection usage for RDS PostgreSQL.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
DatabaseConnections
Why this is correct
This is the standard CloudWatch metric for active connections.
- ✗
ActiveConnections
Why it's wrong here
This metric does not exist for RDS.
- ✗
ConnectionsCount
Why it's wrong here
Not a standard CloudWatch metric for RDS.
- ✗
DBInstanceIdentifier
Why it's wrong here
This is a dimension, not a metric.
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