DEA-C01 Data Operations and Support Practice Question

Correct answer & explanation

Implementing exponential backoff and retries in the Glue job is a best practice to handle transient throttling errors from DynamoDB such as ProvisionedThroughputExceededException. This approach allows the job to automatically retry failed operations with increasing delays, reducing the likelihood of sustained failures without requiring changes to the DynamoDB table's provisioned capacity. Option A is incorrect because DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) is an in-memory cache that can reduce read traffic for cached items, but it does not guarantee elimination of ProvisionedThroughputExceeded exceptions, especially for read operations that are not cached or when the underlying issue is read throughput limits. Option B is incorrect because running the job less frequently does not address the intermittent throttling; the job may still encounter the same error when it runs. Option D is incorrect because, although increasing read capacity units could directly address read throttling, it is not the most cost-effective or best practice for dealing with occasional throttling. The recommended approach is to first implement exponential backoff and retries, only increasing provisioned capacity if throttling persists. Moreover, the ProvisionedThroughputExceededException in this scenario is due to read throughput limits, and increasing write capacity would not help.