A company runs PostgreSQL on a server in its office. The database administrator spends most of her week on backups, minor-version patching and failover rehearsals. The business wants those chores handled by AWS, and the application's existing SQL to keep working unchanged. What should they move to?
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02), objective 3. Cloud technology and services easy
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The options
Correct Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
Correct. RDS runs the same PostgreSQL engine, so the application's SQL is unaffected, while AWS takes over provisioning, patching, automated backups and — with Multi-AZ enabled — the failover the administrator has been rehearsing.
Not correct Amazon DynamoDB
Wrong. DynamoDB is a key-value and document database. It is excellent at what it does, but every join, every relational constraint and most of the application's queries would have to be redesigned, which is the opposite of 'unchanged'.
Not correct PostgreSQL installed on an Amazon EC2 instance
Wrong for the stated goal, though it is a valid migration and sometimes necessary — for an unsupported extension or a version RDS does not offer. It moves the server to AWS and leaves every one of the chores with the administrator.
Not correct Amazon S3
Wrong. S3 stores objects and has no query engine, no transactions and no schema. It is a fine place for the database's exported backups, not for the database.
Why
Amazon RDS is managed relational database service for MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server and the Aurora engines. AWS operates the host and the database software — provisioning, patching, backup, recovery, failover — and you keep the parts that are about your application: schema design, indexes, queries and who may connect. The dividing line is worth remembering because it is the shared responsibility model applied to one service.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- AWS exam guide task statement 3.4
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