DBS-C01 Monitoring and Troubleshooting Practice Question
A database specialist is troubleshooting an Amazon Aurora MySQL cluster. The writer instance's CPU is at 90% and there are frequent 'Lock wait timeout exceeded' errors. The application uses many short-lived connections. What should the specialist do FIRST to reduce lock contention?
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
✓
Enable RDS Proxy to pool database connections
Enabling RDS Proxy reduces connection churn by pooling database connections, which decreases the number of concurrent transactions competing for locks, thereby reducing lock contention. Option A is incorrect because adding read replicas does not address write lock contention on the writer instance. Option B is incorrect although increasing instance size can help with CPU, it does not directly reduce lock contention and may even exacerbate it by allowing more transactions. Option D is incorrect because reducing the maximum number of connections can actually increase contention per connection as the same workload is funneled through fewer connections.
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 additional read replicas to distribute read traffic
Why it's wrong here
Read replicas do not help with write lock contention.
- ✗
Increase the instance size to handle more concurrent transactions
Why it's wrong here
More CPU does not reduce lock contention from many connections.
- ✓
Enable RDS Proxy to pool database connections
Why this is correct
RDS Proxy reduces connection churn, decreasing lock contention.
- ✗
Reduce the maximum number of connections in the application
Why it's wrong here
Reducing connections may increase contention per connection.
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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.