DBS-C01 Monitoring and Troubleshooting Practice Question
A company uses Amazon DynamoDB as a session store for a web application. The application uses a TTL attribute to expire old sessions. The company noticed that expired sessions are not being deleted promptly, causing the table size to grow and increasing costs. The TTL attribute is defined as 'expire_time' with a Unix epoch timestamp. The database specialist verified that TTL is enabled. What should the specialist do to ensure expired sessions are deleted in a timely manner?
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 on the table to allow TTL to delete items faster.
TTL deletion can be delayed if the table has a high write rate; increasing provisioned write capacity can allocate more resources to the background deletion process, allowing expired items to be removed more quickly. Option A is wrong because changing the attribute type to String would not resolve the deletion delay (the TTL attribute should be a Number). Option C is wrong because there is no 'ttl_deletion_lag' parameter in DynamoDB. Option D is wrong because using a Lambda function to scan and delete expired items is unnecessary and inefficient compared to properly tuning TTL.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Change the TTL attribute type to String format.
Why it's wrong here
The attribute type should be Number (epoch), which it already is.
- ✓
Increase the provisioned write capacity on the table to allow TTL to delete items faster.
Why this is correct
TTL deletion uses write capacity; increasing it speeds up deletion.
- ✗
Configure the 'ttl_deletion_lag' parameter to a lower value.
Why it's wrong here
No such parameter exists.
- ✗
Create an AWS Lambda function that scans the table and deletes expired items.
Why it's wrong here
This is inefficient and duplicates TTL functionality.
Visual reference
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
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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.