DOP-C02 Incident and Event Response Practice Question
A company uses Amazon RDS for MySQL as its database. The operations team notices that the database CPU utilization is consistently above 90% during peak hours, causing slow query responses. The team needs to quickly reduce CPU load without changing the application code. Which action should the team take?
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 Performance Insights and analyze the top queries.
Enabling Performance Insights allows the team to identify the specific queries that are consuming CPU resources. By analyzing these top queries, the team can take targeted actions such as optimizing queries or adding indexes to reduce CPU load without changing application code. Option A is incorrect because Multi-AZ deployment provides high availability and failover support but does not reduce CPU utilization. Option B is incorrect because increasing max_connections allows more concurrent connections, which can actually increase CPU load rather than reduce it. Option C is incorrect because adding a read replica offloads read traffic but does not reduce CPU load on the primary instance, and typically requires application changes to route read queries to the replica.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Enable Multi-AZ deployment.
Why it's wrong here
Enabling Multi-AZ deployment provisions a synchronously replicated standby instance in a different Availability Zone, but this standby is not active for reads or writes. It exists solely to enable automatic failover during an AZ outage or an instance failure. Consequently, it does not absorb any of the primary instance's CPU load or query processing, so it cannot reduce high CPU utilization.
- ✗
Modify the DB parameter group to increase max_connections.
Why it's wrong here
Modifying the DB parameter group to raise max_connections increases the maximum number of simultaneous client sessions, but each connection consumes memory and may contribute to thread scheduling overhead. If the current CPU saturation is caused by expensive queries or a suboptimal execution plan, allowing more concurrent connections will likely intensify CPU contention rather than alleviate it. This change addresses connection limits, not the root cause of CPU pressure.
- ✗
Add a read replica to offload read traffic.
Why it's wrong here
Although a read replica can offload SELECT traffic, it operates as an asynchronous secondary in MySQL and does not handle writes or reduce CPU consumed by write operations on the primary. If high CPU stems from complex analytical queries that are still directed to the primary, a replica will not change that load. Additionally, read replicas introduce replication overhead on the primary and are not a general-purpose CPU scaling solution.
- ✓
Enable Performance Insights and analyze the top queries.
Why this is correct
Performance Insights delivers a comprehensive, real-time view of database load, breaking down utilization by waits, SQL statement, and host. By drilling into the 'Top SQL' section, you can pinpoint the exact queries consuming the most CPU, along with statistics such as rows examined and temp tables. This evidence-based approach allows you to optimize indexes or rewrite expensive statements, directly addressing the observed CPU spike.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DOP-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 DOP-C02 exam.