Question 1,038 of 256
Setting Up an Alarm When RDS CPU Exceeds 80% for 5 Minutes
A company's DevOps team notices that their Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL instance's CPU utilization spikes to 90% every day at 10:00 AM, causing application latency. They want to be notified when the CPU utilization exceeds 80% for more than 5 minutes to investigate the cause. Which solution should they implement?
Quick Answer
The correct solution is to create an Amazon CloudWatch alarm on the CPUUtilization metric with a period of 5 minutes and a threshold of 80, and set the alarm action to send a notification to an Amazon SNS topic. This works because CloudWatch metric math allows you to evaluate a single metric—like RDS CPU utilization—over a specified time period, and when the value exceeds the threshold for the duration of that period, the alarm state triggers an SNS notification directly. On the AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional DOP-C02 exam, this question tests your understanding of CloudWatch alarms versus other services like CloudTrail or Trusted Advisor, which are common distractors; CloudTrail tracks API calls, not performance metrics, and Trusted Advisor provides best-practice checks but cannot create custom alarms. A key trap is confusing CloudWatch Logs Insights, which analyzes log data, with metric-based alarms. Remember the mnemonic: "CPU over 80 for five? CloudWatch alarm, SNS to drive."
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
✓
Create an Amazon CloudWatch alarm on the CPUUtilization metric with a period of 5 minutes and a threshold of 80, and set the alarm action to send a notification to an Amazon SNS topic.
An Amazon CloudWatch alarm on the CPUUtilization metric with a period of 5 minutes and a threshold of 80% will evaluate the average CPU utilization over 5-minute intervals. When the average exceeds 80% for a single 5-minute period, the alarm triggers and sends a notification to an SNS topic, meeting the requirement of being alerted when CPU exceeds 80% for more than 5 minutes. Option A is incorrect because CloudWatch Logs Insights is used for querying and analyzing log data, not for triggering alarms on metrics like CPU utilization. Option B is incorrect because AWS Trusted Advisor provides best practice recommendations and does not create custom CloudWatch alarms. Option D is incorrect because AWS CloudTrail records API activity and does not monitor CPU utilization metrics; it cannot trigger notifications based on performance thresholds.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Use Amazon CloudWatch Logs Insights to query the RDS logs and trigger an SNS notification when CPU utilization is high.
Why it's wrong here
CloudWatch Logs Insights queries log data, not metrics.
- ✗
Enable AWS Trusted Advisor to automatically create a CloudWatch alarm on the CPU utilization metric.
Why it's wrong here
Trusted Advisor checks best practices but does not create custom CloudWatch alarms.
- ✓
Create an Amazon CloudWatch alarm on the CPUUtilization metric with a period of 5 minutes and a threshold of 80, and set the alarm action to send a notification to an Amazon SNS topic.
Why this is correct
This directly monitors the metric and triggers notification when the threshold is breached for the specified duration.
- ✗
Create an AWS CloudTrail trail to monitor CPU utilization and trigger an AWS Lambda function to send an email notification.
Why it's wrong here
CloudTrail records API activity, not CPU utilization metrics.
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Same concept, more angles
2 more ways this is tested on DOP-C02
These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.
Variation 1. A company uses Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL and wants to monitor database performance metrics such as CPU utilization, memory, and disk I/O. Which AWS service should be used to set up custom dashboards and alarms for these metrics?
easy- A.AWS X-Ray
- B.Amazon VPC Flow Logs
- C.AWS CloudTrail
- ✓ D.Amazon CloudWatch
Why D: Amazon CloudWatch (Option D) is the correct service for monitoring Amazon RDS performance metrics such as CPU utilization, memory, and disk I/O. CloudWatch provides built-in metrics for RDS, allows creation of custom dashboards to visualize these metrics, and supports setting alarms for proactive notifications. Option A (AWS X-Ray) is used for tracing and analyzing requests through applications, not for infrastructure metrics. Option B (Amazon VPC Flow Logs) captures IP traffic information for network troubleshooting, not database performance. Option C (AWS CloudTrail) logs API calls for auditing, not performance monitoring. Therefore, CloudWatch is the appropriate choice for this use case.
Variation 2. A company needs to monitor the CPU utilization of its Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL instance. The metric should be available in Amazon CloudWatch with a granularity of 1 minute. Which action should the team take?
easy- A.Install the CloudWatch agent on the RDS instance.
- B.Enable Enhanced Monitoring for the RDS instance.
- ✓ C.No additional configuration is needed; RDS automatically sends metrics to CloudWatch.
- D.Enable Performance Insights for the RDS instance.
Why C: Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL automatically publishes metrics, including CPU utilization, to CloudWatch with a default granularity of 1 minute for standard instances. No additional configuration is required to enable this basic monitoring. The metrics are collected by the RDS hypervisor layer and sent to CloudWatch without needing an agent or extra setup.
Last reviewed: Jun 20, 2026
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.
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