SAA-C03 Question 228
Single answerA company is running an e-commerce platform on AWS. The application is hosted in an Auto Scaling group of Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The database layer is managed using Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. During peak traffic, the database performance degrades, and read-heavy queries start to slow down the application. What is the MOST cost-effective solution to improve database performance and handle the increased workload?
- A
Enable Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployment for the database to improve read performance.
- B
Configure Amazon RDS Read Replicas to offload read queries from the primary database.
- C
Increase the instance size of the Amazon RDS database to handle more queries.
- D
Migrate the database to Amazon Aurora for better scalability and read performance.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: B
Explanation
The most cost-effective solution to improve read-heavy database performance is to use Amazon RDS Read Replicas. Read Replicas allow you to offload read queries from the primary database, reducing the load on the primary instance and improving overall performance. Other options, like Multi-AZ or increasing instance size, do not specifically target read performance or may involve higher costs.
- A. Incorrect.
Amazon RDS Multi-AZ provides high availability and disaster recovery but does not improve read performance. It is designed for failover scenarios and not for handling read-heavy workloads.
- B. Correct.
Amazon RDS Read Replicas are specifically designed to offload read queries from the primary database, improving performance during read-heavy workloads. This is a cost-effective solution as it avoids the need to upgrade the primary database instance.
- C. Incorrect.
Increasing the instance size of the Amazon RDS database can improve performance but may not be cost-effective compared to other solutions. It also does not specifically target read-heavy workloads.
- D. Incorrect.
Migrating to Amazon Aurora can improve scalability and performance, but it involves significant migration effort and may not be the most cost-effective option for an immediate performance improvement.