A gaming company has a web application that displays game scores. The application runs on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer…

The core issue is degraded database read performance, leading to long delays for users. An in-memory cache is the most effective solution for this common problem. Amazon ElastiCache provides a managed in-memory data store that can be placed in front of the RDS database. By caching frequently requested data, such as game scores, the application can retrieve this data from the high-speed, low-latency cache instead of querying the disk-based database for every request. This significantly reduces the read load on the RDS instance, improves response times, and enhances the user experience.

B. Use Amazon RDS Proxy between the application and the database.

RDS Proxy primarily manages database connections through pooling, which is beneficial for applications with many connections, but it does not cache data or directly offload read queries to improve read performance.

C. Migrate the application from EC2 instances to AWS Lambda functions.

Changing the compute layer from EC2 to Lambda does not address the underlying database bottleneck. The Lambda functions would still be making the same slow read requests to the RDS database.

D. Use an Amazon Aurora Global Database to create multiple read replicas across multiple AWS Regions.

While read replicas can offload read traffic, an Aurora Global Database is a complex solution for multi-region disaster recovery and low-latency global reads. It is not the most direct or cost-effective solution for a single-region application experiencing read latency, where a simple cache is more appropriate.

1. Amazon ElastiCache Documentation - Database Caching: "You can relieve the load on your database by caching frequently accessed query results. This strategy can result in both lower latency and reduced load on your database." This directly supports using ElastiCache to solve the stated problem.

Source: AWS Documentation

Amazon ElastiCache User Guide

"Caching Strategies

" section "Database Caching."

2. Amazon RDS Proxy Documentation - How RDS Proxy works: "RDS Proxy handles the traffic to your database and reduces the stress of managing connections... RDS Proxy reduces the overhead for memory and CPU for connection management on your database." This highlights its focus on connection management

not query performance or caching.

Source: AWS Documentation

Amazon RDS User Guide

"Using Amazon RDS Proxy

" section "How RDS Proxy works."

3. Amazon Aurora Documentation - Amazon Aurora Global Database: "Amazon Aurora Global Database is designed for applications with a global footprint... It allows you to read from an AWS Region that is local to your users to reduce latency." This shows its primary use case is for globally distributed applications

which is not specified in the question.

Source: AWS Documentation

Amazon Aurora User Guide

"What is Amazon Aurora?

" section "Amazon Aurora Global Database."