Question 458 of 302
SAA-C03 Design High-Performing Architectures Practice Question
A retail analytics app uses Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. Read traffic is growing, and the database CPU spikes mainly due to SELECT-heavy workloads. Writes are less frequent, and the app can tolerate eventually consistent reads for the reports. What is the most appropriate AWS-native way to improve read performance with minimal application changes?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse read replicas with Multi-AZ deployments, thinking Multi-AZ improves read performance, but Multi-AZ only provides failover redundancy and does not offload read traffic—the standby is not accessible for reads.
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 RDS read replica and point the reporting queries to the replica endpoint.
Creating an RDS read replica is the most appropriate AWS-native solution because it offloads SELECT-heavy read traffic from the primary database instance to a separate read-only replica, reducing CPU spikes on the primary. The application can tolerate eventually consistent reads for reports, which aligns with the natural replication lag of RDS read replicas (typically sub-second). This requires minimal application changes—only updating the reporting queries to point to the replica endpoint—and leverages PostgreSQL's built-in streaming replication.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Create an RDS read replica and point the reporting queries to the replica endpoint.
Why this is correct
Read replicas offload reads from the primary and can speed up SELECT-heavy workloads with minimal changes.
- ✗
Switch the cluster to DynamoDB without redesigning the data model.
Why it's wrong here
Moving to DynamoDB typically requires significant model changes and does not directly solve RDS read pressure.
- ✗
Enable S3 event notifications to trigger a Lambda function after each write to the database.
Why it's wrong here
S3 event notifications are unrelated to database read scaling and won’t reduce SELECT workload on RDS.
- ✗
Replace the RDS instance class with a smaller size to reduce cost and improve performance.
Why it's wrong here
Smaller instances usually worsen performance and would likely increase CPU and latency under read load.
About these practice questions
Courseiva creates original exam-style practice questions with explanations and wrong-answer analysis. It does not publish real exam questions, exam dumps, or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
Last reviewed: Jun 11, 2026
This SAA-C03 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 SAA-C03 exam.
Question Discussion
Share a tip, memory trick, or ask about the reasoning behind this question. Do not post real exam questions, leaked content, braindumps, or copyrighted exam material. Comments are moderated and may be removed without notice.
Sign in to join the discussion.