DBS-C01 Management and Operations Practice Question
A company is using Amazon DynamoDB with on-demand capacity mode. The application experiences occasional throttling during traffic spikes. The database administrator wants to implement a solution to reduce throttling. Which THREE actions should the administrator take? (Choose THREE.)
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
✓
Use DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) to cache frequently accessed items.
Options A, D, and E are correct. Using DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) caches frequently accessed items, offloading read capacity from the table and reducing read throttling. Implementing exponential backoff and retry logic in the application (option D) and designing the application to handle throttling by retrying with backoff (option E) both ensure that requests are retried gracefully during spikes, reducing the impact of throttling. Option B is incorrect because auto scaling is not applicable to on-demand capacity mode, which scales automatically. Option C is incorrect because switching to provisioned capacity does not inherently reduce throttling; on-demand already handles sudden spikes, but throttling may still occur if the workload exceeds table limits momentarily.
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 DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) to cache frequently accessed items.
Why this is correct
DAX reduces read traffic to the table, decreasing the chance of read throttling.
- ✗
Enable auto scaling for the table.
Why it's wrong here
Auto scaling is for provisioned capacity mode, not on-demand.
- ✗
Switch the table to provisioned capacity mode with auto scaling.
Why it's wrong here
On-demand mode is designed for spiky traffic; switching to provisioned may increase costs and complexity.
- ✓
Implement exponential backoff and retry logic in the application.
Why this is correct
Exponential backoff retries handle throttling errors efficiently.
- ✓
Design the application to handle throttling by retrying with backoff.
Why this is correct
Building retry logic into the application is a best practice for handling throttling.
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