What should a solutions architect do to reduce the impact on the database with the LEAST amount of effort?
Create a read replica and direct reporting traffic to the replica.
Create a Multi-AZ database and direct reporting traffic to the standby.
Create a cross-Region read replica and direct reporting traffic to the replica.
Create an Amazon Redshift database and direct reporting traffic to the Amazon Redshift database.
Explanations:
Creating a read replica allows for offloading read traffic from the primary database, which minimizes the performance impact on the web application during heavy reporting activities. It requires minimal effort to set up.
Multi-AZ deployments are primarily for high availability and failover purposes. The standby instance cannot be used for read traffic, so it will not reduce the impact on performance during reporting.
While a cross-Region read replica could theoretically reduce the load, it introduces additional latency and complexity, and it is not necessary for this use case. Local read replicas are sufficient to handle reporting needs.
Amazon Redshift is a data warehouse solution designed for analytics and may require significant data migration and ETL processes. It is not a minimal effort solution for reducing database impact during reporting.
As I see it, the answer is:
Create a read replica and direct reporting traffic to the replica.