DVA-C02 Troubleshooting and Optimization Practice Question
A developer notices that an Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance's CPU utilization is consistently above 90% during peak hours. Which AWS service can the developer use to analyze the database queries and identify the root cause?
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
✓
Amazon RDS Performance Insights
Amazon RDS Performance Insights is the correct service for analyzing database queries and identifying the root cause of high CPU utilization. Performance Insights provides a database performance analysis feature that offers a visual dashboard and query-level metrics, enabling developers to pinpoint resource-intensive queries. AWS X-Ray is used for tracing application requests, not database queries. CloudWatch Logs is for log data storage and monitoring, not query-level analysis. Trusted Advisor provides cost and security recommendations, not database performance insights. Therefore, Performance Insights is the appropriate tool for this scenario.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
AWS X-Ray
Why it's wrong here
AWS X-Ray is a distributed tracing service designed to help developers analyze and debug production, distributed applications. While X-Ray can trace calls from an application to a database and report the latency of those calls from the application's perspective, it does not provide granular insights into the internal operations of the database instance itself. It cannot identify specific slow queries, wait events, or detailed resource consumption within the database engine, as its primary focus is on end-to-end request flow and service interaction.
- ✗
Amazon CloudWatch Logs
Why it's wrong here
Amazon CloudWatch Logs is a service for centralizing, storing, and monitoring log files from various sources, including Amazon RDS. Although RDS can publish logs like the slow query log or general log to CloudWatch Logs, the service itself is primarily a log aggregator and storage solution. It does not inherently provide real-time, graphical analysis of database performance metrics or automatically identify top SQL queries by load without requiring additional custom parsing, filtering, and visualization tools built on top of the raw log data.
- ✓
Amazon RDS Performance Insights
Why this is correct
Amazon RDS Performance Insights is the dedicated service for monitoring and analyzing database performance by visualizing database load. It collects and presents key performance metrics, including Average Active Sessions (AAS), wait events, and the full text of top SQL queries, allowing developers to quickly identify bottlenecks and understand *why* a database is slow. Its interactive dashboard provides granular insights into the database engine's activity, pinpointing specific queries, users, or hosts consuming the most resources and enabling targeted optimization.
- ✗
AWS Trusted Advisor
Why it's wrong here
AWS Trusted Advisor is a service that provides recommendations to help users follow AWS best practices across categories like cost optimization, performance, security, fault tolerance, and service limits. It offers checks and advice on resource configuration and potential issues based on established best practices. However, Trusted Advisor does not provide real-time or historical analysis of specific database query performance, internal database load metrics, or detailed insights into *why* a particular query is running slowly. It operates at a higher, advisory level, not an operational monitoring or diagnostic level.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every DVA-C02 question from scratch — 1,135 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DVA-C02 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 DVA-C02 exam.