DBS-C01 Management and Operations Practice Question
A company is using Amazon DynamoDB for a web application. The company notices that read requests to a particular table are throttled during peak hours. The table has a provisioned read capacity of 1000 read capacity units (RCUs). The read requests are mostly eventually consistent reads. What should the company do to reduce throttling without changing the application code?
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
✓
Increase the provisioned read capacity for the table.
Increasing provisioned read capacity directly provides more RCUs, reducing throttling without code changes. Option A is wrong because ElastiCache would require application code changes to implement caching. Option B is wrong: Switching to strongly consistent reads would double RCU consumption per read (for reads up to 4 KB) or increase it, worsening throttling. Option C is wrong: DAX does require code changes to integrate (though minimal), and the question specifically asks for no application code changes.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Use Amazon ElastiCache to cache the read results.
Why it's wrong here
Using ElastiCache requires application code changes to integrate caching, which violates the requirement of no code changes.
- ✗
Switch to strongly consistent reads to reduce the number of read requests.
Why it's wrong here
Switching to strongly consistent reads would increase RCU consumption (each strongly consistent read consumes the same as two eventually consistent reads), increasing throttling risk.
- ✗
Implement DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) to cache read requests.
Why it's wrong here
DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) requires modifications to the application code to point to the DAX cluster endpoint, so it does not meet the no-code-change requirement.
- ✓
Increase the provisioned read capacity for the table.
Why this is correct
Increasing provisioned read capacity directly addresses the throttling by allowing more read requests per second without any code changes.
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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.