SAP-C02 Question 443
Select 2A company is running a high-traffic, read-heavy web application on AWS using Amazon RDS for MySQL in a Multi-AZ deployment. Users are experiencing increased latency during peak traffic periods. As a Solutions Architect, what is the most appropriate strategy to improve performance while keeping the solution highly available and minimizing operational overhead?
- A
Add read replicas to the Amazon RDS instance and configure the application to offload read queries to the read replicas.
- B
Scale up the Amazon RDS instance to a larger instance class to handle the increased load.
- C
Enable RDS Proxy to optimize connection pooling and reduce the overhead of managing database connections.
- D
Switch from Amazon RDS to Amazon Aurora MySQL to take advantage of its distributed storage architecture.
- E
Migrate the database to Amazon DynamoDB as it can handle high traffic with lower latency.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answers: A, C
Explanation
The best strategies to improve performance in this scenario are adding read replicas to offload read traffic and enabling RDS Proxy to optimize connection pooling. These solutions are cost-effective, improve performance during peak traffic, and maintain high availability without adding significant operational complexity. Scaling up the instance or migrating to a different database service may address performance but contradict the requirement to minimize operational overhead.
- A. Correct.
Adding read replicas to Amazon RDS allows you to offload read traffic from the primary database instance, improving performance during read-heavy workloads. This approach maintains availability and minimizes operational overhead.
- B. Incorrect.
Scaling up to a larger instance class can improve performance, but it may not address the specific challenge of read-heavy workloads during peak traffic. This option can also increase costs significantly without resolving the root cause.
- C. Correct.
Enabling RDS Proxy helps optimize connection pooling, reducing the overhead of managing database connections, especially for applications with a high number of concurrent connections. This is a cost-effective way to improve performance.
- D. Incorrect.
Switching to Amazon Aurora MySQL could improve performance due to its distributed architecture, but it involves a migration effort, which may increase operational complexity and downtime. The question emphasizes minimizing operational overhead, so this is not the best choice.
- E. Incorrect.
Migrating to Amazon DynamoDB would require substantial application changes as it is a NoSQL database. While DynamoDB can handle high traffic, this option does not align with the requirement to minimize operational overhead.