DEA-C01 Data Store Management Practice Question
A company has an Amazon DynamoDB table with on-demand capacity mode. The table stores session data for a web application. Recently, the application experienced throttling errors during a traffic spike. The team wants to prevent future throttling while optimizing costs. What should they do?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers assume throttling in on-demand mode must be fixed by switching to provisioned capacity or enabling auto scaling, but they overlook that on-demand already scales automatically and the real solution is to reduce read load via caching with DAX.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Implement a DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) cluster
A DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) cluster provides an in-memory cache that absorbs read-heavy traffic spikes, reducing the number of read requests that reach the underlying DynamoDB table. Since the throttling errors occurred during a traffic spike and the table uses on-demand capacity, which already scales automatically for writes and reads, the bottleneck is likely read-heavy traffic overwhelming the table's throughput. DAX offloads reads from the table, preventing throttling without requiring any changes to capacity mode, and it is cost-effective because it reduces read capacity unit consumption.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Implement a DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) cluster
Why this is correct
DAX provides in-memory caching to reduce read throttling.
- ✗
Enable DynamoDB auto scaling on the table
Why it's wrong here
Auto scaling is not applicable to on-demand mode.
- ✗
Switch to provisioned capacity with auto scaling
Why it's wrong here
On-demand cannot be switched to provisioned without redesign; auto scaling would need to be set up.
- ✗
Increase the read and write capacity of the table
Why it's wrong here
On-demand does not have manual capacity settings.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DEA-C01 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the DEA-C01 exam.