DBS-C01 Monitoring and Troubleshooting Practice Question
A company is running an Amazon DynamoDB table with on-demand capacity. The application is experiencing high latency for GetItem operations. CloudWatch shows that 'ThrottledRequests' is zero, but 'ConsumedReadCapacityUnits' is consistently below the provisioned limit. The table has a global secondary index (GSI) with a different partition key. What is the most likely cause of the high latency?
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
✓
Throttling on the base table due to hot partitions
While throttling on a Global Secondary Index (GSI) can cause backpressure and affect writes to the base table, it does not directly impact read operations like GetItem. In this scenario, with zero ThrottledRequests, throttling is not occurring on the base table or GSI. The high latency is more likely caused by a hot partition on the base table, which can still result in increased response times even before throttling metrics are triggered. Option C is therefore incorrect; the correct answer is D.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
High write activity on the base table causing read latency
Why it's wrong here
High write activity on the base table does not directly cause read latency, especially when there is no throttling indicated.
- ✗
Insufficient provisioned read capacity on the base table
Why it's wrong here
With on-demand capacity, there is no provisioned limit to be insufficient; consumed capacity being below any theoretical limit would not cause latency.
- ✗
Throttling on the global secondary index due to uneven access patterns
Why it's wrong here
GSI throttling primarily affects write operations to the base table and GSI reads, not GetItem operations on the base table.
- ✓
Throttling on the base table due to hot partitions
Why this is correct
Hot partitions on the base table can lead to increased latency even if ThrottledRequests is zero, as requests may queue internally before throttling occurs.
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JA
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.