DBS-C01 Monitoring and Troubleshooting Practice Question
A company is using Amazon DynamoDB with autoscaling enabled. The table has a partition key of 'order_id' and a sort key of 'order_date'. The application performs both point queries and range queries. Recently, the 'ConsumedReadCapacityUnits' metric shows that the table is consistently using 100% of the provisioned capacity. Which THREE factors should the database engineer investigate to determine the cause?
⚠ Common exam trap
AWS often tests the misconception that autoscaling misconfiguration is the primary cause of high capacity utilization, when in reality the root cause is often inefficient access patterns (Scans) or uneven data distribution (hot keys) that autoscaling cannot fix.
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
✓
Whether the application is using Scan operations instead of Query operations.
Scan operations read the entire table or index before applying filters, consuming far more read capacity than Query operations, which target specific partition and sort key values. If the application is using Scans instead of Queries, it would consistently consume 100% of provisioned capacity even for small result sets, leading to throttling and high utilization.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Whether autoscaling is configured correctly to add capacity.
Why it's wrong here
Autoscaling adjusts provisioned capacity, not consumed capacity.
- ✓
Whether the application is using Scan operations instead of Query operations.
Why this is correct
Scans consume more read capacity than queries.
- ✓
Whether the partition key is evenly distributed across partitions.
Why this is correct
Uneven distribution leads to hot partitions and throttling.
- ✓
Whether a specific 'order_id' is being accessed frequently, creating a hot key.
Why this is correct
Hot keys can cause high consumption on a single partition.
- ✗
Whether a global secondary index is being used for queries.
Why it's wrong here
GSI usage does not affect the table's consumed read capacity directly.
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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.