AWS Certified Solutions Architect – ProfessionalDesign Solutions for Organizational ComplexityHard
A company is migrating a critical enterprise application to AWS. The application has extremely low latency requirements (sub-millisecond) for its database interactions and a read-to-write ratio of 10:1. The database is currently a proprietary, high-performance relational database. The solutions architect needs to choose an AWS database service that can meet these performance demands, scale automatically for reads, and be highly available across multiple Availability Zones. Which AWS database service should be recommended?
- AAmazon RDS for PostgreSQL with Multi-AZ deployment and read replicas.
- BAmazon Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible Edition with multiple Aurora Replicas and a Multi-AZ deployment.
- CAmazon DynamoDB with On-Demand capacity mode and global tables.
- DAmazon ElastiCache for Redis in a cluster configuration with read replicas.
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: B. Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible Edition with multiple Aurora Replicas and a Multi-AZ deployment.
Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible Edition is designed for high performance and scalability, offering sub-millisecond read latency. Its architecture supports up to 15 Aurora Replicas for scaling reads, and its Multi-AZ deployment provides high availability, making it ideal for the stated requirements.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. While RDS for PostgreSQL with Multi-AZ and read replicas provides good performance and availability, Aurora offers significantly better performance and scalability, especially for sub-millisecond latency and high read ratios.
- C. DynamoDB is a NoSQL database, and the question specifies a 'proprietary, high-performance relational database'. While DynamoDB offers low latency, it's not a direct replacement for a relational database without significant application refactoring.
- D. ElastiCache is an in-memory caching service, not a primary persistent database. While it provides sub-millisecond latency, it's typically used to offload reads from a primary database, not as the primary database itself for an enterprise application.
Amazon Aurora
A MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database built for the cloud, combining the performance and availability of traditional enterprise databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open-source databases.
- Up to 5x faster than MySQL and 3x faster than PostgreSQL.
- Scales automatically, up to 128TB of storage.
- Highly available with up to 15 read replicas across multiple AZs.
Memory trick: Aurora shines for speed and scales for reads.