SAP-C02 Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions Practice Question
A company has a multi-tier application running on AWS. The web tier uses an Application Load Balancer (ALB) with an Auto Scaling group of EC2 instances. The application tier runs on a separate Auto Scaling group of EC2 instances. The database tier uses Amazon RDS for MySQL. During a recent load test, the application became unresponsive. Monitoring showed that the database's CPU utilization was at 100% and the number of database connections was at the maximum limit. The application tier instances were healthy, but the web tier instances were returning 503 errors. The Solutions Architect determined that the application tier was making too many database connections because each request opened a new connection and did not close it properly. The team wants to fix the issue with minimal changes to the application code. Which solution should the Solutions Architect recommend?
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
✓
Configure Amazon RDS Proxy to pool database connections from the application tier.
Amazon RDS Proxy provides connection pooling, allowing the application to reuse existing connections rather than opening new ones. This reduces the number of simultaneous connections to the database, alleviating CPU and connection limit pressure. It requires minimal code changes. Option A is incorrect because migrating to Aurora does not address the connection management problem; it may still require RDS Proxy. Option B is incorrect because increasing max_connections does not fix the root cause of unclosed connections and can lead to resource contention. Option C is incorrect because scaling the application tier horizontally would increase the number of connections, worsening the issue.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Migrate the database from RDS MySQL to Amazon Aurora MySQL with read replicas.
Why it's wrong here
Aurora may improve performance but does not address connection pooling; the application still opens too many connections.
- ✗
Increase the max_connections parameter in the RDS parameter group to allow more connections.
Why it's wrong here
This treats the symptom, not the cause; it may lead to resource exhaustion and does not fix connection leaks.
- ✗
Scale the application tier horizontally by increasing the desired capacity of the Auto Scaling group.
Why it's wrong here
More instances will create more connections, exacerbating the database load.
- ✓
Configure Amazon RDS Proxy to pool database connections from the application tier.
Why this is correct
RDS Proxy manages connection pooling, reducing the number of connections and CPU usage with minimal code changes.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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