AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03)Design Resilient ArchitecturesEasy

A startup is developing a new social media platform. They expect rapid user growth and need a highly scalable, fully managed database solution that can handle millions of requests per second with single-digit millisecond latency. The data model is flexible and schema-less. Which AWS database service is the most appropriate choice?

  1. AAmazon RDS for PostgreSQL
  2. BAmazon Redshift
  3. CAmazon DynamoDB
  4. DAmazon Aurora
Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: C. Amazon DynamoDB

Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed, serverless NoSQL database service designed for high-performance applications that need to handle millions of requests per second with single-digit millisecond latency at any scale. Its flexible schema also fits the 'schema-less' requirement.

Why the other options are wrong

  • A. RDS for PostgreSQL is a relational database, not ideal for schema-less data and not designed for millions of requests/second at single-digit millisecond latency at massive scale without significant tuning.
  • B. Amazon Redshift is a data warehouse service, designed for analytics, not for transactional, low-latency applications.
  • D. Amazon Aurora is a relational database (MySQL/PostgreSQL compatible), offering high performance but still relational and not as inherently schema-less or massively scalable for NoSQL use cases as DynamoDB.

Amazon DynamoDB

A fully managed, serverless, key-value and document NoSQL database service that delivers single-digit millisecond performance at any scale. It supports flexible schemas and is highly available and durable.

  • NoSQL database (key-value, document).
  • Serverless and fully managed.
  • Scales to millions of requests/second with single-digit millisecond latency.
  • High availability and durability across multiple AZs.

Memory trick: DynamoDB: Dynamic Data, Dynamic Scale.

More Design Resilient Architectures questions