SAP-C02 Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions Practice Question
A company is experiencing increased latency in their web application running on EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The application uses an RDS MySQL database. The CloudWatch metrics show elevated CPU utilization on the database instance during peak hours. Which design change would be MOST effective to reduce database load without application code changes?
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
✓
Enable RDS Proxy to manage database connections.
RDS Proxy is a database proxy that manages connection pooling, reducing the CPU overhead associated with opening and closing many database connections. It requires only a change in the database endpoint configuration, not application code changes, making it the most effective solution that satisfies the requirement of no code changes. Option A (read replica) would require application changes to direct read traffic to the replica. Option B (upgrading instance type) vertically scales the database but does not reduce the load; it only provides more capacity to handle the same load. Option C (ElastiCache for Redis) reduces database read load by caching frequent queries, but implementing it typically requires application code modifications to integrate the caching logic, which conflicts with the stem's requirement.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Add a second RDS read replica to distribute read traffic.
Why it's wrong here
Read replicas require application changes to direct read queries.
- ✗
Upgrade the RDS instance to a larger instance type with more vCPUs.
Why it's wrong here
Vertical scaling may help but is less efficient than caching for repeated reads.
- ✗
Implement an ElastiCache for Redis cluster to cache frequently accessed data.
Why it's wrong here
Caching reduces database read load without application modifications.
- ✓
Enable RDS Proxy to manage database connections.
Why this is correct
RDS Proxy improves connection management but does not reduce CPU load from queries.
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