AWS Solutions Architect Associate Practice Test

When would you choose provisioned IOPS in RDS over standard storage?

1. If you use production online transaction processing

2. If you have workloads that are not sensitive to latency/lag

3. If your business was trying to save money

4. If this was a test DB

The correct answer is: If you use production online transaction processing

Choosing provisioned IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) in Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) is ideal for production online transaction processing (OLTP) workloads. This is because OLTP applications require consistently high and predictable performance to ensure quick response times for transactions. Provisioned IOPS allows you to specify the IOPS throughput to meet the demands of such workloads, minimizing latency and maximizing throughput. In situations involving production OLTP, the performance characteristics—such as the speed and number of read and write operations—are critical. By selecting provisioned IOPS, you can ensure that your database can handle high workloads efficiently without degradation in performance, making this option well-suited for environments where each transaction's speed is crucial. Moreover, while standard storage might be cost-effective, it does not guarantee the same level of performance consistency as provisioned IOPS, which can lead to potential bottlenecks during peak access times, adversely affecting user experience. Hence, for production scenarios with a significant volume of transactions and performance sensitivity, provisioned IOPS is the recommended choice.