DBS-C01 Monitoring and Troubleshooting Practice Question
A company is using Amazon DynamoDB with provisioned capacity. They notice an increase in throttled write requests. The workload consists of writes to a single partition key. Which TWO actions would help reduce 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 write capacity units.
Options B and C are correct. Increasing provisioned write capacity (B) directly addresses throttling by allowing more writes per second. Enabling DynamoDB auto scaling with adaptive capacity (C) automatically adjusts capacity based on traffic and helps handle uneven access patterns, including hot partitions. Option A (adding a global secondary index with a different partition key) does not reduce throttling on the base table; it only provides an alternative query path. Option D (DAX) is a read cache and does not assist with write throttling. Option E (write sharding) can help distribute writes across partitions, but the question asks for two actions from the given list; B and C are the most direct and effective.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Add a global secondary index with a different partition key.
Why it's wrong here
GSI helps with read patterns, not write throttling.
- ✓
Increase the provisioned write capacity units.
Why this is correct
More capacity directly reduces throttling.
- ✓
Enable DynamoDB auto scaling with adaptive capacity.
Why this is correct
Auto scaling adjusts capacity based on load, and adaptive capacity helps with hot partitions.
- ✗
Use DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) for write caching.
Why it's wrong here
DAX caches reads, not writes.
- ✗
Implement write sharding by adding a suffix to the partition key.
Why it's wrong here
Write sharding distributes writes across partitions, but the question asks for actions to reduce throttling; this is a design change, not an immediate action.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
One of 1,663 original DBS-C01 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
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.