SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a new microservices architecture on AWS. Each microservice must store its own data and communicate with other services via RESTful APIs. The company wants to minimize operational overhead. Which data store should the company use for each microservice?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates choose Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL because they assume relational databases are required for structured data, but the question emphasizes minimizing operational overhead, and DynamoDB's serverless, fully managed nature eliminates the need for schema management, scaling, and patching that RDS still requires.
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
✓
Amazon DynamoDB
Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL key-value and document database that provides single-digit millisecond latency at any scale, making it ideal for microservices that need to store their own data and communicate via RESTful APIs. It requires no operational overhead for scaling, patching, or replication, and its pay-per-request billing aligns with the unpredictable traffic patterns common in microservices architectures.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Amazon ElastiCache for Redis
Why it's wrong here
ElastiCache for Redis is an in-memory cache, not a durable primary data store, so it cannot persist each microservice's own data across restarts. It is tempting because it delivers sub-millisecond reads for session state or hot-data caching in front of a database, which is its actual purpose.
- ✗
Amazon Redshift
Why it's wrong here
Redshift is a columnar analytics warehouse for large-scale OLAP queries, not per-service transactional storage, so it cannot serve as each microservice's own database. It is tempting because it handles petabyte-scale reporting workloads, which is where it would be the correct choice.
- ✗
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
Why it's wrong here
RDS for PostgreSQL requires the administrator to manage instance sizing, patching, backups and failover, which conflicts with minimising operational overhead. It is tempting because relational engines suit transactional microservice data, and RDS would be correct where a self-managed relational database is explicitly required.
- ✓
Amazon DynamoDB
Why this is correct
DynamoDB is fully managed and serverless, so it removes provisioning, patching and scaling chores, directly satisfying the minimise-operational-overhead constraint. Its per-table design also lets each microservice own its data, and it exposes RESTful access through the AWS SDK and HTTPS endpoints.
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