Which solution meets these requirements MOST cost-effectively?

A development team runs monthly resource-intensive tests on its general purpose Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance with Performance Insights enabled. The testing lasts for 48 hours once a month and is the only process that uses the database. The team wants to reduce the cost of running the tests without reducing the compute and memory attributes of the DB instance.

Which solution meets these requirements MOST cost-effectively?
A . Stop the DB instance when tests are completed. Restart the DB instance when required.
B . Use an Auto Scaling policy with the DB instance to automatically scale when tests are completed.
C . Create a snapshot when tests are completed. Terminate the DB instance and restore the snapshot when required.
D . Modify the DB instance to a low-capacity instance when tests are completed. Modify the DB instance again when required.

View Answer

Answer: A

Explanation:

To reduce the cost of running the tests without reducing the compute and memory attributes of the Amazon RDS for MySQL DB instance, the development team can stop the instance when tests are completed and restart it when required. Stopping the DB instance when not in use can help save costs because customers are only charged for storage while the DB instance is stopped. During this time, automated backups and automated DB instance maintenance are suspended. When the instance is restarted, it retains the same configurations, security groups, and DB parameter groups as when it was stopped.

Reference: Amazon RDS Documentation: Stopping and Starting a DB instance

(https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_StopInstance.html)