DBS-C01 Workload-Specific Database Design Practice Question
This DBS-C01 practice question tests your understanding of workload-specific database design. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A financial services company needs a relational database with high availability and automatic failover across three Availability Zones in us-east-1. The workload consists of OLTP transactions with occasional analytic queries. Which database solution meets these requirements?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Amazon Aurora MySQL with Multi-AZ deployment across 3 AZs
Amazon Aurora MySQL with Multi-AZ deployment across 3 AZs meets the requirements because Aurora automatically replicates your data six ways across three Availability Zones, with a primary DB instance in one AZ and two read replicas in the other two AZs. In the event of a failure, Aurora automatically fails over to a read replica in under 30 seconds without data loss, providing high availability and automatic failover across three AZs. Aurora also supports both OLTP transactions and can handle occasional analytic queries via Aurora Replicas or Aurora Global Database for read scaling.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
✗
Amazon RDS for MySQL with Multi-AZ (2 AZs)
Why it's wrong here
RDS Multi-AZ only supports 2 AZs, not 3.
✗
Amazon DynamoDB global tables
Why it's wrong here
DynamoDB is NoSQL, not relational.
✓
Amazon Aurora MySQL with Multi-AZ deployment across 3 AZs
Why this is correct
Aurora provides automatic failover across 3 AZs and supports OLTP and analytics.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Amazon Redshift with cross-region snapshots
Why it's wrong here
Redshift is for analytics, not OLTP, and cross-region snapshots do not provide automatic failover.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse RDS Multi-AZ (which only supports 2 AZs) with Aurora's native multi-AZ replication across 3 AZs, or they mistakenly think DynamoDB global tables (a NoSQL service) can replace a relational database for OLTP workloads requiring ACID transactions.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Aurora uses a shared storage volume that is striped across 100s of SSD-based storage nodes, with data replicated six ways across three AZs, ensuring durability and availability. The failover mechanism is handled at the cluster level, where the primary instance can be promoted from any of the up to 15 Aurora Replicas, and the endpoint automatically updates to point to the new primary. For occasional analytic queries, you can offload read traffic to Aurora Replicas without impacting the primary's OLTP performance, leveraging the cluster's read scaling capability.
KKey Concepts to Remember
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
→Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
→Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
An e-commerce site experiences heavy traffic on Black Friday and near-zero traffic during off-peak weeks. Rather than provisioning permanent large VMs, the team uses auto-scaling groups that add capacity automatically under load and reduce it overnight. Questions like this test whether you understand elasticity, availability zones, and cloud compute scaling patterns.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Workload-Specific Database Design — This question tests Workload-Specific Database Design — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Amazon Aurora MySQL with Multi-AZ deployment across 3 AZs — Amazon Aurora MySQL with Multi-AZ deployment across 3 AZs meets the requirements because Aurora automatically replicates your data six ways across three Availability Zones, with a primary DB instance in one AZ and two read replicas in the other two AZs. In the event of a failure, Aurora automatically fails over to a read replica in under 30 seconds without data loss, providing high availability and automatic failover across three AZs. Aurora also supports both OLTP transactions and can handle occasional analytic queries via Aurora Replicas or Aurora Global Database for read scaling.
What should I do if I get this DBS-C01 question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Question Discussion
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