RDS & Aurora Practice Quiz

1. What type of workloads is RDS primarily designed for?

OLAP (Analytical Processing) OLTP (Transaction Processing) Batch Processing Real-time Streaming

2. Which storage system does RDS use for its databases?

Amazon S3 Amazon EBS Amazon EFS Instance Store

3. Which RDS database engine is AWS-proprietary but MySQL/PostgreSQL compatible?

Oracle Aurora MariaDB SQL Server

4. True or False: PostgreSQL in RDS can handle both relational and JSON/document queries.

True False

5. What type of scaling requires a database restart in RDS?

Adding read replicas Vertical scaling (instance type upgrade) Enabling Multi-AZ Storage auto-scaling

6. How does Multi-AZ improve availability?

By distributing reads across replicas By maintaining a sync standby in another AZ By caching frequent queries By reducing storage costs

7. Which backup method in RDS is automatic?

Manual snapshots Point-in-time recovery Automated daily backups Export to S3

8. For cross-region disaster recovery, what RDS feature would you use?

Multi-AZ Read replicas Elastic Cache Storage gateway

9. Your e-commerce application needs to handle sudden spikes in read traffic. Which RDS feature helps most?

Vertical scaling Read replicas Multi-AZ Larger EBS volumes

10. You need to minimize downtime during database maintenance. Which two features should you enable?

Read replicas + Larger instance type Multi-AZ + Automated backups Cross-region replicas + Manual snapshots None of the above

11. What is the maximum retention period for RDS automated backups?

7 days 15 days 35 days 60 days

12. Which RDS feature enables restoration to any second within your backup window?

Manual snapshots Point-in-time recovery Read replicas Multi-AZ failover

13. What happens to manual snapshots if you don't delete them?

Auto-delete after 35 days Persist indefinitely Convert to automated backups Archive to S3 Glacier

14. Which deployment type avoids production I/O suspension during backups for PostgreSQL?

Single-AZ Multi-AZ Cross-region replica Aurora Serverless

15. Where are RDS automated backups stored?

EBS volumes S3 EFS Instance store

16. What is the primary purpose of an RDS read replica?

Increase write capacity Offload read traffic from the primary database Replace automated backups Reduce storage costs

17. Can a read replica be promoted to a standalone database?

No, read replicas are permanently read-only Yes, but it requires downtime Yes, and it becomes an independent database Only if it's in the same region as the primary

18. How does cross-region replication benefit an RDS deployment?

Provides automatic failover during outages Reduces read latency for geographically distributed users Eliminates the need for backups Allows changing encryption status

19. True or False: Most RDS modifications (like scaling) happen instantly without downtime.

True False

20. What is the first step to encrypt an unencrypted RDS database?

Enable encryption in the RDS console Take an unencrypted snapshot Restore from an existing encrypted backup Contact AWS Support

21. Can you disable encryption on an encrypted RDS snapshot?

Yes, via the AWS Management Console No, encryption is permanent once applied Only if the snapshot is less than 30 days old Only for MySQL databases

22. What must applications do after restoring an encrypted RDS database?

Nothing, the endpoint remains the same Update to use the new database endpoint Manually decrypt the data Reconfigure the security group

23. Which AWS service manages encryption keys for RDS?

AWS Secrets Manager AWS KMS (Key Management Service) AWS Certificate Manager AWS CloudHSM

24. Which database engines is Amazon Aurora compatible with?

MySQL and PostgreSQL Oracle and SQL Server MongoDB and DynamoDB Only PostgreSQL

25. How does Aurora's performance compare to standard MySQL?

2x slower Equal performance Up to 5x faster Only optimized for analytics

26. How many copies of data does Aurora maintain across AZs?

2 3 6 (two per AZ) 15

27. What is the maximum storage capacity per Aurora database instance?

64TB 128TB 256TB Unlimited

28. What feature allows Aurora to automatically recover from disk failures?

Multi-AZ deployment Self-healing storage Read replicas Global Database

29. How many Aurora Replicas can be created within a single region?

5 10 15 Unlimited

30. What is the typical replication lag for Aurora Replicas?

<10 milliseconds 1-5 seconds 10-30 seconds Variable

RDS Practice Quiz