CompTIA Cloud+ (CV0-004)TroubleshootingMedium
A cloud administrator is investigating slow application performance during peak hours. Monitoring shows that the database server's disk I/O utilization is consistently at 100%, and the application logs frequently report 'database connection timeout' errors. The database server has sufficient CPU and memory. What is the MOST effective immediate action to mitigate this performance issue?
- AIncrease the CPU and memory allocated to the database server.
- BScale up the database server's storage to a higher IOPS tier.
- COptimize database queries to reduce I/O operations.
- DAdd more read replicas to distribute the read load.
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: B. Scale up the database server's storage to a higher IOPS tier.
With disk I/O utilization at 100% and sufficient CPU/memory, the bottleneck is clearly the storage's ability to handle read/write requests. Scaling up to a higher IOPS tier directly addresses this bottleneck immediately.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. CPU/memory are already sufficient, so increasing them won't address the I/O bottleneck.
- C. Query optimization is a long-term solution and may require code changes, not an immediate mitigation.
- D. Adding read replicas helps with read-heavy workloads, but if the primary is bottlenecked by I/O (potentially for writes or specific reads that can't be offloaded), it won't resolve the 100% I/O on the current instance.
IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second)
A common performance metric for storage devices, indicating the maximum number of read/write operations a storage device can handle per second.
- Higher IOPS means faster data access.
- Critical for databases and high-transaction applications.
- Cloud providers offer different storage tiers with varying IOPS capabilities.
Memory trick: Disk Maxed? Upgrade Storage Specs.