DOP-C02 Monitoring and Logging Practice Question
A DevOps engineer is troubleshooting an issue where an Amazon RDS for MySQL instance is experiencing high latency. The engineer wants to identify which queries are causing the problem. Which AWS service should be used?
⚠ Common exam trap
DOP-C02 often tests the distinction between control-plane logging (CloudTrail), infrastructure metrics (CloudWatch), and database-level query analytics (Performance Insights) — candidates confuse CloudWatch Metrics with query-level diagnostics.
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 a database performance tuning tool that visualizes database load (Average Active Sessions) broken down by SQL statement, wait event, user, and host. It directly identifies which queries are consuming the most DB load, making it the correct tool for diagnosing high-latency MySQL workloads. It retains up to 7 days of free performance data and up to 2 years with paid retention.
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 Performance Insights
Why this is correct
Amazon RDS Performance Insights is the correct choice because it is a dedicated database performance tuning feature that visualizes database load and provides granular, per-query metrics. It breaks down DB load by wait events, SQL statements, and hosts, directly surfacing the exact query text and execution statistics (e.g., rows returned, latency) causing high load. This allows a DevOps engineer to identify problematic queries quickly, unlike network or API-level logs.
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AWS CloudTrail
Why it's wrong here
AWS CloudTrail is not the right tool because it records control-plane API calls (such as CreateDBInstance, ModifyDBParameterGroup) and management events across AWS services, not database queries or data-plane operations. It captures who made an API call, from which IP, and when, but it does not log individual SQL statements or query execution performance. Therefore, CloudTrail cannot reveal slow-running or resource-intensive queries.
- ✗
Amazon CloudWatch Metrics
Why it's wrong here
Amazon CloudWatch Metrics provides aggregated, high-level monitoring for RDS such as CPUUtilization, DatabaseConnections, ReadIOPS, and FreeableMemory, but it does not offer per-query granularity. These metrics show overall database health and trends, yet they cannot pinpoint which specific SQL statement is consuming resources. A DevOps engineer could see that load is high but would have no visibility into the underlying query causing the spike without a query-level diagnostic tool.
- ✗
VPC Flow Logs
Why it's wrong here
VPC Flow Logs capture metadata about network traffic flowing to and from the RDS database, including source/destination IP addresses, ports, and packet counts, but they do not log the contents of the traffic, such as SQL commands or query performance details. They are useful for security analysis, network troubleshooting, and understanding connection patterns, but they cannot identify a problematic query or its execution time. Thus, this option is unrelated to diagnosing database query performance issues.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Amazon Web Services exam blueprint
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.