SAP-C02 Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions Practice Question
A company has a monolithic application running on a single Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance. The application is experiencing performance issues due to heavy read traffic. The company wants to implement a solution that offloads read traffic with minimal application changes. What should a solutions architect do?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse Multi-AZ standby instances with read replicas, not realizing that Multi-AZ standby instances are strictly for high availability and cannot serve read traffic, while read replicas are specifically designed to offload read workloads.
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 a read replica of the RDS instance and modify the application connection string to use the reader endpoint.
Creating a read replica of the RDS for MySQL DB instance and modifying the application connection string to use the reader endpoint offloads read traffic from the primary instance with minimal application changes. The reader endpoint automatically distributes connections across all read replicas, reducing the load on the primary instance without requiring code changes beyond updating the connection string.
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 a read replica of the RDS instance and modify the application connection string to use the reader endpoint.
Why this is correct
RDS read replicas replicate asynchronously from the primary, and the reader endpoint load-balances connections across all replicas. Pointing the connection string at this endpoint diverts SELECT queries without schema or code rewrites, satisfying the minimal-change constraint while relieving the primary's read pressure.
- ✗
Migrate the application to use Amazon DynamoDB with global tables.
Why it's wrong here
DynamoDB is a NoSQL store, so migrating a MySQL-backed monolithic application requires rewriting the data model and query layer, not a minimal change. Global tables exist for multi-Region active-active replication, which suits globally distributed write workloads, not offloading read traffic from an existing relational database.
- ✗
Use Amazon RDS Multi-AZ with a standby instance for read traffic.
Why it's wrong here
A Multi-AZ standby exists solely for automatic failover and cannot serve read traffic; it remains inaccessible until a failover promotes it. It is tempting because Multi-AZ sounds like added capacity, but read offloading requires RDS read replicas, which serve reads on separate endpoints while the primary handles writes.
- ✗
Implement Amazon ElastiCache in front of the database to cache read queries.
Why it's wrong here
ElastiCache caches query results but does not serve the underlying read traffic itself; cache misses still hit the single RDS instance, so heavy read load persists. It is tempting because caching is genuinely used to reduce database reads, but it requires application code changes to check and populate the cache, violating the minimal-change requirement that RDS read replicas satisfy.
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