DBS-C01 Monitoring and Troubleshooting Practice Question
A company is using Amazon DynamoDB with auto scaling for a social media application. The table has a partition key of 'user_id'. The application performs many small writes (update user profile) and reads (fetch user profile). Recently, the application's response time has increased. The DBA checks CloudWatch and sees that 'ConsumedWriteCapacityUnits' is close to 'ProvisionedWriteCapacityUnits', and 'WriteThrottleEvents' is low. However, 'ReadThrottleEvents' is high. The table has 1000 WCU and 1000 RCU provisioned. The auto scaling is configured to add capacity when utilization exceeds 70%. The DBA also notices that 'ReadThrottleEvents' spikes during peak hours. What should the DBA do to reduce read throttling?
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 to 2000 RCU or implement DAX caching.
Increasing provisioned read capacity to 2000 RCU would directly address the read throttling, and implementing DAX caching would offload read traffic, reducing the load on the DynamoDB table. Option A is incorrect because decreasing write capacity does not free up read capacity; DynamoDB provisioned capacity for reads and writes is independent. Option B is incorrect because increasing the auto scaling target utilization to 90% would actually cause scaling to trigger at a higher utilization, potentially leading to more throttling, not less. Option C is incorrect because DynamoDB does not use storage types like GP2; that is a concept for Amazon EBS volumes, not applicable to DynamoDB.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Decrease the provisioned write capacity to 500 WCU to free up resources.
Why it's wrong here
Write capacity does not affect read throttling.
- ✗
Increase the auto scaling target utilization to 90% to allow more headroom.
Why it's wrong here
Higher target utilization may cause more throttling.
- ✗
Change the storage type to General Purpose SSD (gp2) to improve I/O.
Why it's wrong here
DynamoDB uses internal storage, not EBS volumes.
- ✓
Increase the provisioned read capacity to 2000 RCU or implement DAX caching.
Why this is correct
Increasing RCU reduces throttling; DAX offloads reads.
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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.