Question 726 of 1,663
DBS-C01 Monitoring and Troubleshooting Practice Question
A company uses Amazon DynamoDB and notices that some queries are taking longer than expected. The table has a partition key only. The 'ConsumedReadCapacityUnits' is below the provisioned throughput. What is the most likely cause of the slow queries?
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
✓
The partition key is not distributed evenly, causing hot partitions
If the partition key is not chosen well, data can be skewed, causing hot partitions. Even if total consumed capacity is below provisioned, a single partition may receive more requests than its share of capacity, causing throttling on that partition, which slows queries. Option A is wrong because DAX is a caching layer that speeds up reads, not slows them. Option B is wrong because global tables replication does not affect read latency on the source table. Option C is wrong because DynamoDB Streams do not consume read capacity for reads from the table; they use separate capacity.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
DAX is misconfigured and slowing down reads
Why it's wrong here
DAX is a caching layer that reduces read latency, not increases.
- ✗
Global tables replication is causing delays
Why it's wrong here
Global tables replication affects writes, not reads.
- ✗
DynamoDB Streams is enabled and consuming read capacity
Why it's wrong here
Streams consume read capacity but do not slow down GetItem or Query operations.
- ✓
The partition key is not distributed evenly, causing hot partitions
Why this is correct
A hot partition can throttle requests even if overall capacity is underused.
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Last reviewed: Jun 20, 2026
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