Quick Answer
The answer is Amazon CloudWatch and Amazon RDS Performance Insights. CloudWatch is the core monitoring service for AWS, collecting essential RDS metrics like CPU utilization, database connections, and read/write latency, and it allows you to set alarms that trigger actions such as SNS notifications when thresholds are breached. Performance Insights complements this by providing deeper database load analysis and visualizations to identify bottlenecks, and it can publish its metrics to CloudWatch for alarm purposes. On the AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate SOA-C02 exam, this pairing tests your understanding that CloudWatch handles broad metric monitoring and alerting, while Performance Insights focuses on granular database performance tuning—a common trap is to overlook Performance Insights as a separate service or to confuse it with RDS Enhanced Monitoring. For a memory tip, think of CloudWatch as the watchful guard for overall health, and Performance Insights as the detective for internal database struggles.
This SOA-C02 practice question tests your understanding of monitoring, logging, and remediation. Match the stated requirement to the specific cloud service, access model, or configuration option — many options are valid in isolation but not for this scenario. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
Which TWO AWS services can be used to monitor the performance of an Amazon RDS database and set alarms based on metrics?
AWS Lambda
Why wrong: Lambda is compute, not monitoring.
Amazon RDS Performance Insights
Performance Insights provides database performance metrics and can trigger alarms via CloudWatch.
Amazon S3
Why wrong: S3 is storage, not a monitoring service.
Amazon CloudWatch
CloudWatch monitors RDS metrics like CPU, connections, and can set alarms.
AWS CloudTrail
Why wrong: CloudTrail logs API calls, not performance metrics.
Answer choices
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
Amazon RDS Performance Insights
Amazon CloudWatch (Option D) is the primary monitoring service for AWS resources, including Amazon RDS. It collects metrics like CPU utilization, database connections, and read/write latency, and allows you to set CloudWatch Alarms that trigger actions (e.g., SNS notifications) when thresholds are breached. Amazon RDS Performance Insights (Option B) provides deeper database performance analysis by visualizing database load and identifying bottlenecks, and it can also publish metrics to CloudWatch for alarm purposes.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
AWS Lambda
Why it's wrong here
Lambda is compute, not monitoring.
Amazon RDS Performance Insights
Why this is correct
Performance Insights provides database performance metrics and can trigger alarms via CloudWatch.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Amazon S3
Why it's wrong here
S3 is storage, not a monitoring service.
Amazon CloudWatch
Why this is correct
CloudWatch monitors RDS metrics like CPU, connections, and can set alarms.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
AWS CloudTrail
Why it's wrong here
CloudTrail logs API calls, not performance metrics.
Common exam traps
The trap here is that candidates often confuse AWS CloudTrail (audit logging) with CloudWatch (monitoring), or think Lambda can be used for monitoring when it is actually a compute trigger, not a monitoring service.
Detailed technical explanation
CloudWatch collects RDS metrics at a 1-minute granularity (or 5 minutes for free tier) via the AWS/RDS namespace, and you can create alarms based on statistics like Average or Sum over a period. Performance Insights uses a database load metric (in units of Average Active Sessions) to identify top SQL queries and waits, and it integrates with CloudWatch to expose the DBLoad metric for alarming. In a real-world scenario, you might set a CloudWatch alarm on CPUUtilization > 80% for 5 minutes, while using Performance Insights to pinpoint the specific query causing the spike.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
A media company stores terabytes of video archives that are accessed once a year for audit purposes. Moving these objects to a cold storage tier (Azure Archive, S3 Glacier, or Google Nearline) costs a fraction of hot storage. Questions like this test whether you understand storage tiers, access frequency tradeoffs, and retrieval latency requirements.
What to study next
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FAQ
Monitoring, Logging, and Remediation — This question tests Monitoring, Logging, and Remediation — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
The correct answer is: Amazon RDS Performance Insights — Amazon CloudWatch (Option D) is the primary monitoring service for AWS resources, including Amazon RDS. It collects metrics like CPU utilization, database connections, and read/write latency, and allows you to set CloudWatch Alarms that trigger actions (e.g., SNS notifications) when thresholds are breached. Amazon RDS Performance Insights (Option B) provides deeper database performance analysis by visualizing database load and identifying bottlenecks, and it can also publish metrics to CloudWatch for alarm purposes.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Last reviewed: Jun 24, 2026
This SOA-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 SOA-C02 exam.
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