SAP-C02 Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions Practice Question
A company wants to reduce costs for its Amazon RDS for MySQL database without affecting performance. The database is used by a read-intensive application. Which action should the company take?
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
✓
Implement a Read Replica and direct read traffic to it.
Implementing a Read Replica allows offloading read traffic from the primary DB instance. This reduces the load on the primary, potentially enabling the use of a smaller instance size or lowering provisioned IOPS, thereby reducing costs without affecting performance for the read-intensive application. Option A is incorrect because Multi-AZ deployment adds a standby instance and synchronous replication, increasing costs without direct performance benefit. Option B is incorrect; upgrading to the latest generation instance type may improve performance but generally does not reduce costs. Option D is incorrect; purchasing Reserved Instances provides a discount on hourly rates but does not address the utilization or instance size, so it does not directly reduce costs based on workload.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Change the DB instance to a Multi-AZ deployment.
Why it's wrong here
Multi-AZ maintains a synchronous standby in a second Availability Zone for failover, which raises cost rather than reducing it, and the standby serves no read traffic. It is tempting as a resilience improvement, but the requirement is cost reduction for a read-intensive workload, which read replicas address.
- ✗
Upgrade to the latest generation instance type.
Why it's wrong here
Upgrading the instance generation changes the underlying hardware, which can improve performance but does not reduce cost; newer generations often cost the same or more per hour. It would be the right choice when the workload is CPU- or memory-constrained and needs faster compute, not when the goal is cost reduction for a read-heavy database.
- ✓
Implement a Read Replica and direct read traffic to it.
Why this is correct
Read Replicas offload read queries from the primary MySQL instance via asynchronous replication, so the read-intensive application's traffic no longer competes with writes on the primary. This reduces load and cost without degrading performance, satisfying the no-impact constraint.
- ✗
Purchase Reserved Instances for the database.
Why it's wrong here
Reserved Instances reduce the hourly rate through a commitment, but they do not address the read-intensive workload's cost driver, which is the number of read replicas or query volume. Reserved Instances would be correct for a steady-state database where the instance runs continuously and the goal is to lower the per-hour price.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every SAP-C02 question from scratch — 984 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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.