DBS-C01 Monitoring and Troubleshooting Practice Question
A company is using Amazon DynamoDB with auto scaling. The application is experiencing increased read latency. The monitoring shows that the ReadThrottleEvents metric is high. Which action should the company take 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
✓
Implement DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) for caching.
DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) provides an in-memory cache that reduces read latency and alleviates read throttling by serving frequently accessed items from cache, reducing the load on the underlying table. Option B is incorrect because switching to on-demand capacity mode may help with unpredictable traffic patterns but does not specifically address read throttling caused by high read demand; it can also increase costs. Option C is incorrect because enabling DynamoDB Streams does not directly reduce read throttling and may add overhead. Option D is incorrect because increasing write capacity units does not affect read throttling since read and write capacities are separate.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Implement DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) for caching.
Why this is correct
DAX caches reads, reducing pressure on the table.
- ✗
Switch the table to on-demand capacity mode.
Why it's wrong here
On-demand may not reduce throttling if workload is bursty; also cost may increase.
- ✗
Enable DynamoDB Streams on the table.
Why it's wrong here
Enabling DynamoDB Streams captures item-level changes for downstream processing, but does not increase the table’s read capacity or reduce the rate of read requests. The high ReadThrottleEvents metric indicates that provisioned read capacity is exceeded, which requires either increasing read capacity units or optimising read patterns—not capturing change data. It is tempting because streams are often used to offload read-heavy workloads to replicas, but that requires global tables or a separate caching layer, not streams alone.
- ✗
Increase the write capacity units.
Why it's wrong here
Write capacity does not affect read throttling.
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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.