SAP-C02 Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions Practice Question
A company runs a critical application on an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance. The database experiences periodic slowdowns. The team notices that the DB instance has a large number of connections in an idle state. What is the BEST way to address this issue?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap is thinking 'more connections' solves connection-related slowdowns; candidates pick increasing max_connections when the real issue is idle connection waste, which pooling addresses.
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
✓
Use an RDS Proxy to pool database connections.
Amazon RDS Proxy pools and reuses database connections, reducing the number of idle connections held by the application and smoothing connection churn. This directly addresses the slowdown caused by many idle connections, improving database performance without application changes. It also handles failover and credentials via Secrets Manager.
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 to Amazon Aurora.
Why it's wrong here
Aurora changes the storage and replication engine but does not pool connections; idle sessions would still exhaust the instance's connection limit and cause the same slowdowns. It is tempting when seeking higher throughput or faster failover, and would be correct if the bottleneck were storage performance rather than connection count.
- ✗
Configure AWS Lambda to manage database connections.
Why it's wrong here
Lambda cannot pool connections for an external RDS instance; each invocation opens its own session, worsening idle connection accumulation. It is tempting for event-driven database access patterns, and would be correct for running discrete queries, not for managing a persistent application's connection lifecycle.
- ✓
Use an RDS Proxy to pool database connections.
Why this is correct
RDS Proxy pools and reuses established connections, so idle sessions no longer consume backend resources on the DB instance. This directly resolves the connection exhaustion causing periodic slowdowns, since the proxy multiplexes many client connections onto fewer database connections without application changes.
- ✗
Increase the max_connections parameter in the DB parameter group.
Why it's wrong here
Raising max_connections permits more concurrent sessions, but idle connections already hold their slots, so the slowdown persists and memory pressure worsens. It is tempting because connection exhaustion superficially matches the symptom, and would be correct if genuine demand, not idle sessions, were exhausting the limit.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Amazon Web Services exam blueprint
This SAP-C02 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 SAP-C02 exam.