Question 1,101 of 1,711
DEA-C01 Data Store Management Practice Question
A data engineering team is managing an Amazon DynamoDB table that stores user session data. The table has a primary key of user_id (partition key) and session_id (sort key). The application performs strongly consistent reads on individual items. The team notices that read latency increases during peak hours. They suspect that the table is experiencing hot partitions. The team needs to improve read performance without changing the application code. Which solution should they implement?
⚠ Common exam trap
AWS often tests the misconception that increasing provisioned capacity (RCUs) can solve hot partition issues, but candidates must remember that DynamoDB enforces a per-partition throughput limit that cannot be exceeded regardless of total table capacity.
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
✓
Enable DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) for the table.
DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) is a fully managed, in-memory cache that delivers up to 10x read performance improvement by caching hot partition data. Since the application uses strongly consistent reads and cannot be changed, DAX provides a drop-in caching layer that reduces read latency on hot partitions without requiring any code modifications.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Enable DynamoDB global tables to distribute reads across regions.
Why it's wrong here
Global tables are for cross-region replication, not performance.
- ✓
Enable DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) for the table.
Why this is correct
DAX caches reads and reduces latency.
- ✗
Increase the read capacity units for the table.
Why it's wrong here
May not solve hot partition issue if the partition key is skewed.
- ✗
Change the application to use eventually consistent reads.
Why it's wrong here
Application requires strongly consistent reads.
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Same concept, more angles
1 more way this is tested on DEA-C01
These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.
Variation 1. A data engineering team is using Amazon DynamoDB to store user session data for a web application. The application experiences sudden spikes in traffic, causing throttling on the DynamoDB table. The team wants to minimize throttling without over-provisioning read/write capacity. Which solution should the team implement?
medium- A.Enable DynamoDB Time to Live (TTL) to automatically delete expired items.
- B.Disable auto scaling and manually set a high provisioned capacity.
- C.Use Amazon RDS read replicas to offload read traffic.
- ✓ D.Enable DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) caching layer.
Why D: DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) is a fully managed, in-memory cache that reduces read latency from single-digit milliseconds to microseconds. By caching frequently accessed items, DAX offloads read requests from the DynamoDB table, directly reducing the read capacity consumption and thus minimizing throttling during traffic spikes without requiring over-provisioning of read capacity units.
Last reviewed: Jun 30, 2026
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.
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