AWS Certified Database – Specialty — Question 41

An Amazon RDS EBS-optimized instance with Provisioned IOPS (PIOPS) storage is using less than half of its allocated IOPS over the course of several hours under constant load. The RDS instance exhibits multi-second read and write latency, and uses all of its maximum bandwidth for read throughput, yet the instance uses less than half of its CPU and RAM resources.
What should a Database Specialist do in this situation to increase performance and return latency to sub-second levels?

Answer options

• A. Increase the size of the DB instance storage
• B. Change the underlying EBS storage type to General Purpose SSD (gp2)
• C. Disable EBS optimization on the DB instance
• D. Change the DB instance to an instance class with a higher maximum bandwidth

Correct answer: D

Explanation

The correct answer is D, as upgrading to an instance class with a higher maximum bandwidth can provide additional throughput, alleviating the latency issues. Options A and B do not address the bandwidth limitations directly, while option C would worsen performance by disabling EBS optimization, which is counterproductive in this scenario.