A company runs an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL database. The application performs frequent OLTP writes, but it also has a separate dashboard that runs heavy SELECT queries and is slowing down overall database performance. The writes must remain on the primary. What is the best approach to improve performance for the dashboard?

Increase instance storage throughput limits and disable synchronous replication to speed up all queries

Storage throughput tuning may help some I/O-bound scenarios, but it does not separate dashboard read workload from OLTP write contention. Disabling synchronous replication is not a safe or targeted approach for improving dashboard performance and can change durability/consistency characteristics.

Replace RDS with Amazon S3 because dashboards require SQL result caching

S3 is object storage and does not run PostgreSQL queries or provide relational SQL execution. It cannot replace the database engine for SELECT workloads, so it would not address the source of database contention.

Move the primary database to a different AWS Region to reduce network latency

Changing regions may affect client network latency, but it does not offload read workload from the primary. The core performance issue described is contention between dashboard reads and primary writes, which read replicas are designed to address.

What does this SAA-C03 question test?

Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.

What is the correct answer to this question?

The correct answer is: Create an RDS read replica and route the dashboard’s read-only queries to the replica endpoint — Create an RDS read replica and route the dashboard’s read-only queries to the replica endpoint. This isolates heavy read workloads (SELECTs) from the primary database that handles OLTP writes. By shifting reads to the replica, you reduce contention on the primary so write performance is less impacted. The design remains straightforward because you do not need to redesign the schema to separate read vs write paths; you instead separate compute/read traffic using the read replica endpoint. Why others are wrong: Storage throughput changes do not specifically separate dashboard reads from OLTP write contention. S3 is not a relational database and cannot execute PostgreSQL SQL. Moving regions may change latency for clients, but it does not provide a mechanism to offload read workloads from the primary, so it does not directly solve the described performance bottleneck.

What should I do if I get this SAA-C03 question wrong?

Then try more questions from the same exam bank and focus on understanding why the wrong options are tempting.