This SAA-C03 practice question tests your understanding of design high-performing architectures. Read the scenario carefully and evaluate each option against the stated constraints before committing to an answer. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A video platform uses Amazon Aurora. The workload has many short-lived database connections from Lambda functions, causing connection storms. What should be added?
S3 Select
Why wrong: S3 Select queries object content and is unrelated to database connection pooling.
An internet gateway
Why wrong: An internet gateway does not manage database connections.
A larger Route 53 hosted zone
Why wrong: DNS hosted zones do not solve connection storms.
RDS Proxy
RDS Proxy pools and manages database connections, improving scalability for serverless and bursty workloads.
Answer choices
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
RDS Proxy
RDS Proxy sits between Lambda functions and the Aurora database, pooling and reusing database connections. This prevents the Lambda functions from overwhelming the database with many short-lived connections, which can cause connection storms and degrade performance. RDS Proxy also reduces the overhead of establishing new connections and improves scalability.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
S3 Select
Why it's wrong here
S3 Select queries object content and is unrelated to database connection pooling.
An internet gateway
Why it's wrong here
An internet gateway does not manage database connections.
A larger Route 53 hosted zone
Why it's wrong here
DNS hosted zones do not solve connection storms.
RDS Proxy
Why this is correct
RDS Proxy pools and manages database connections, improving scalability for serverless and bursty workloads.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Common exam traps
The trap here is that candidates may confuse connection pooling with network-level components (like internet gateways) or data retrieval services (like S3 Select), overlooking that RDS Proxy is the AWS-native solution for managing short-lived database connections from serverless or highly concurrent workloads.
Detailed technical explanation
RDS Proxy maintains a warm pool of connections to the Aurora database, allowing Lambda functions to borrow and return connections without the overhead of TLS handshakes and authentication. It also handles IAM authentication and can enforce least-privilege access by mapping IAM roles to database credentials. In real-world scenarios, this is critical for serverless architectures where Lambda functions can scale rapidly, as each function instance would otherwise create a new database connection, exhausting the database's connection limit.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
A media company stores terabytes of video archives that are accessed once a year for audit purposes. Moving these objects to a cold storage tier (Azure Archive, S3 Glacier, or Google Nearline) costs a fraction of hot storage. Questions like this test whether you understand storage tiers, access frequency tradeoffs, and retrieval latency requirements.
What to study next
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FAQ
Design High-Performing Architectures — This question tests Design High-Performing Architectures — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
The correct answer is: RDS Proxy — RDS Proxy sits between Lambda functions and the Aurora database, pooling and reusing database connections. This prevents the Lambda functions from overwhelming the database with many short-lived connections, which can cause connection storms and degrade performance. RDS Proxy also reduces the overhead of establishing new connections and improves scalability.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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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.
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