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AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Associate: Improving Amazon Aurora MySQL Database Stability with Replicas and Auto Scaling

Learn how to enhance the stability and performance of an Amazon Aurora MySQL database by creating Aurora Replicas, implementing Auto Scaling for replicas, and routing read-heavy workloads to the read-only connection string.

Table of Contents

Question

A company hosts a production MySQL database on an Amazon Aurora single-node DB cluster. The database is queried heavily for reporting purposes. The DB cluster is experiencing periods of performance degradation because of high CPU utilization and maximum connections errors. A SysOps administrator needs to improve the stability of the database.

Which solution will meet these requirements?

A. Create an Aurora Replica node. Create an Auto Scaling policy to scale replicas based on CPU utilization. Ensure that all reporting requests use the read-only connection string
B. Create a second Aurora MySQL single-node DB cluster in a second Availability Zone. Ensure that all reporting requests use the connection string for this additional node
C. Create an AWS Lambda function that caches reporting requests. Ensure that all reporting requests call the Lambda function
D. Create a multi-node Amazon ElastiCache cluster. Ensure that all reporting requests use the ElastiCache cluster. Use the database if the data is not in the cache.

Answer

A. Create an Aurora Replica node. Create an Auto Scaling policy to scale replicas based on CPU utilization. Ensure that all reporting requests use the read-only connection string

Explanation

Aurora Replica nodes are read-only replicas of the primary database instance. They offload read traffic from the primary instance, improving overall performance and scalability.

By creating an Aurora Replica node, the read-heavy reporting queries can be directed to the read-only connection string of the replica, reducing the load on the primary instance and alleviating the performance issues caused by high CPU utilization.

Setting up an Auto Scaling policy to scale the number of Aurora Replicas based on CPU utilization ensures that there are enough replicas to handle the reporting workload during periods of high demand, further enhancing the database’s stability.

Routing all reporting requests to the read-only connection string of the Aurora Replicas ensures that the primary instance is not impacted by the reporting workload, allowing it to handle write operations more efficiently.

This solution effectively separates the read and write workloads, leveraging the scalability and high availability of Aurora Replicas to improve the overall stability and performance of the database.

The other options are incorrect because:

B. Creating a second Aurora MySQL single-node DB cluster in another Availability Zone does not address the root cause of the performance issues and may lead to data inconsistency if writes are allowed on both clusters.
C. Caching reporting requests with AWS Lambda adds an unnecessary layer of complexity and may not effectively offload the read workload from the database.
D. Using Amazon ElastiCache for caching reporting data may work, but it introduces additional operational overhead and complexity compared to the built-in read scaling capabilities of Aurora Replicas.

Amazon AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate certification exam practice question and answer (Q&A) dump with detail explanation and reference available free, helpful to pass the Amazon AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate exam and earn Amazon AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate certification.