DBS-C01 Workload-Specific Database Design Practice Question
A gaming company uses Amazon DynamoDB to store player profiles. The table has partition key 'player_id' and sort key 'game_id'. During a new game launch, write traffic to a subset of players (influencers) spikes, causing throttling. The table uses on-demand capacity. Which solution resolves the hot key issue?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often assume on-demand capacity mode automatically solves all scaling issues, but it cannot mitigate hot keys because the bottleneck is at the partition level, not the table level.
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
✓
Add a random suffix to the partition key for the hot players to distribute writes
Adding a random suffix to the partition key for hot players distributes the write traffic across multiple partitions, preventing any single partition from being overwhelmed. DynamoDB's on-demand capacity mode automatically scales to handle traffic spikes, but it cannot resolve a hot key issue where all writes target the same partition key. By diversifying the partition key, writes are spread across partitions, allowing DynamoDB to utilize its full throughput 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.
- ✗
Increase the maximum read capacity units in the on-demand settings
Why it's wrong here
On-demand capacity automatically scales, but hot keys still cause throttling.
- ✗
Switch to provisioned capacity mode and increase write capacity units
Why it's wrong here
Provisioned mode still suffers from hot key issues without design changes.
- ✓
Add a random suffix to the partition key for the hot players to distribute writes
Why this is correct
Shuffling hot keys across partitions resolves hot key throttling.
- ✗
Enable DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) to cache writes
Why it's wrong here
DAX caches reads, not writes.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
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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.