DBS-C01 Management and Operations Practice Question
A company is running an Amazon DynamoDB table with global secondary indexes (GSIs). Write activity increases, and the 'ThrottledWriteEvents' metric for a GSI spikes. The table itself is not throttled. What is the most likely cause?
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
✓
The GSI's partition key is not sufficiently distributed.
Write sharding on the GSI partition key can cause hot partitions. Option A is wrong because read capacity on the GSI does not affect writes. Option C is wrong because write capacity on the table is separate from GSI. Option D is wrong because the issue is about throttling on GSI, not table.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The index is too large for the base table.
Why it's wrong here
Index size does not directly cause throttling.
- ✓
The GSI's partition key is not sufficiently distributed.
Why this is correct
A skewed partition key causes hot partitions on the GSI, leading to write throttling.
- ✗
The table's write capacity is set too low.
Why it's wrong here
The table is not throttled, so table capacity is sufficient.
- ✗
The GSI's read capacity is set too low.
Why it's wrong here
Read capacity affects reads, not writes.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DBS-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 DBS-C01 exam.