AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C02) — Question 281

A company recently started using Amazon Aurora as the data store for its global ecommerce application. When large reports are run, developers report that the ecommerce application is performing poorly. After reviewing metrics in Amazon CloudWatch, a solutions architect finds that the ReadIOPS and CPUUtilization metrics are spiking when monthly reports run.
What is the MOST cost-effective solution?

Answer options

• A. Migrate the monthly reporting to Amazon Redshift.
• B. Migrate the monthly reporting to an Aurora Replica.
• C. Migrate the Aurora database to a larger instance class.
• D. Increase the Provisioned IOPS on the Aurora instance.

Correct answer: B

Explanation

Using an Aurora Replica is the most cost-effective solution because it allows you to offload read-heavy reporting queries from the primary writer instance, thereby eliminating CPU and ReadIOPS spikes on the main transactional database. Scaling up the instance class or increasing Provisioned IOPS would unnecessarily increase costs for the entire month just to handle a temporary reporting workload. Migrating to Amazon Redshift is also inefficient and costly for simple monthly reporting needs when a read replica can easily handle the load.