AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – AssociateCost and Performance OptimizationMedium
A financial institution is running a mission-critical, high-transaction application on an Amazon RDS for MySQL database. The application experiences unpredictable spikes in write traffic, leading to performance degradation and increased latency during peak hours. The current configuration uses a single Provisioned IOPS (PIOPS) volume. What is the MOST effective strategy to improve write performance and handle the unpredictable spikes?
- AEnable RDS Storage Auto Scaling for the database instance.
- BIncrease the Provisioned IOPS value for the RDS volume.
- CConvert the database instance to a Multi-AZ deployment.
- DIncrease the allocated storage for the RDS instance.
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: B. Increase the Provisioned IOPS value for the RDS volume.
For an RDS instance using Provisioned IOPS, increasing the PIOPS value directly increases the number of I/O operations per second the volume can sustain. This is the most effective way to improve write performance and handle unpredictable spikes in write traffic for a PIOPS volume, as it directly scales the I/O capacity.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. RDS Storage Auto Scaling automatically increases storage capacity when needed, but it does not automatically increase Provisioned IOPS. The problem is write performance (IOPS), not storage capacity.
- C. Converting to Multi-AZ improves availability and durability by creating a standby replica in another AZ, but it does not directly increase the write throughput capacity of the primary instance.
- D. Increasing allocated storage for a PIOPS volume does not directly increase IOPS; PIOPS are specified independently. It might improve performance if the issue was storage capacity, but not IOPS.
RDS Provisioned IOPS
A storage type for Amazon RDS that delivers a consistent baseline of I/O performance (IOPS) for I/O-intensive workloads.
- Performance is specified in IOPS, not directly tied to storage size.
- Suitable for mission-critical, high-performance applications.
- Can be scaled up or down independently of storage size (within limits).
Memory trick: RDS performance peaks with precise PIOPS provisioning.