Amazon RDS Provisioned IOPS

5 minutes 5 Questions

Amazon RDS Provisioned IOPS (Input/Output Operations per Second) is designed to meet the needs of heavy and demanding applications with high transactional workloads. It allows you to provision up to 64,000 IOPS per DB instance, providing predictable and consistent performance. With Provisioned IOPS, you can increase or decrease the allocated resources to match the application's requirements, and ensure smooth scaling without affecting the underlying infrastructure. By combining Provisioned IOPS with other Amazon RDS features, such as Multi-AZ Deployments and Read Replicas, you can build a highly available and scalable database infrastructure that is optimized to handle high database workloads.

Guide: Understanding Amazon RDS Provisioned IOPS

What is Amazon RDS Provisioned IOPS?
This is a feature in Amazon RDS that enables you to specify the I/O operations per second (IOPS) and storage capacity ranging from 100 IOPS to 40,000 IOPS while creating or modifying a DB instance. This feature provides a consistent and high performance for I/O-intensive workload.

Why is it Important?
For mission-critical, data-driven applications, consistent database performance is crucial. It eliminates the unpredictability often associated with shared storage resources, making it easier for businesses to manage their database applications.

How it Works?
When a DB instance is launched with Provisioned IOPS, Amazon RDS provisions the specified IOPS rate and storage capacity for that DB instance, and maintains it over time irrespective of the volume of database and log activity.

Exam Tips: Answering Questions on Amazon RDS Provisioned IOPS
1. Understand the concept thoroughly: It's essential to understand what Provisioned IOPS is and its role in Amazon RDS.
2. Analytics Application Knowledge: Know that it is beneficial for transactional (OLTP) and analytics (OLAP) workloads where consistent I/O performance is critical.
3. Configure suitably: Be aware that IOPS rate and storage capacity need to be specified at the time of DB instance creation or modification.

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Question 1

A company has an RDS instance with a highly transactional database. The current IOPS rate for the RDS instance is not meeting the performance requirements. Which of the following solutions should be considered to improve RDS performance?

Move to an RDS read replica Increase the IOPS by moving to Provisioned IOPS Enable RDS Multi-AZ deployment Increase the size of the RDS instance

Correct Answer: Increase the IOPS by moving to Provisioned IOPS

The best solution for improving RDS performance and IOPS rate in this scenario is by moving to Provisioned IOPS. Increasing the size of the RDS instance, enabling Multi-AZ deployment, changing the storage type, or moving to an EC2 instance would not necessarily increase the IOPS rates for the scenario.

Question 2

A web application is experiencing slow response times in peak hours. The root cause appears to be high write operations on the RDS database. Which of the following is the best solution to address this issue?

Configure RDS for Provisioned IOPS and increase IOPS capacity Scale the RDS instance vertically by increasing CPU and memory Migrate the database to Amazon Redshift Add a read replica in RDS

Correct Answer: Configure RDS for Provisioned IOPS and increase IOPS capacity

To handle high write operations on an RDS database, the best approach is to configure RDS for Provisioned IOPS and increase the IOPS capacity. Read replica, scaling the instance vertically, migrating to Redshift, enabling Multi-AZ deployment, and scaling application servers would not directly address the write operation bottleneck.

Question 3

Your RDS instance is not meeting the desired IOPS required for a particular business-critical transaction. The instance is already on Provisioned IOPS storage. What would be the best solution to increase IOPS with minimal downtime?

Reboot the RDS instance Increase the allocated storage size to automatically scale the Provisioned IOPS Create an RDS read replica Convert the RDS instance to use General Purpose storage

Correct Answer: Increase the allocated storage size to automatically scale the Provisioned IOPS

Increasing the allocated storage size automatically scales the Provisioned IOPS, providing a minimal downtime solution. Converting to General Purpose storage, rebooting the instance, creating a read replica, enabling Multi-AZ deployment or creating a new RDS instance would not help in increasing the IOPS without significant downtime.

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