SAP-C02 Continuous Improvement for Existing Solutions Practice Question
A company uses Amazon DynamoDB with on-demand capacity. They notice that a specific table frequently exceeds the write throughput limit and experiences throttling. The table has a partition key with high cardinality. What is the MOST likely cause of 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
✓
A sudden spike in write traffic exceeds the table's burst capacity
On-demand DynamoDB tables can handle traffic spikes up to double the previous peak. If write traffic exceeds that threshold, throttling occurs. The table's burst capacity is limited to the previous peak for on-demand, so a sudden spike exceeding that will cause throttling. Option B is incorrect because DAX is a caching layer for reads, not writes, and does not affect write throughput. Option C is incorrect because the table is using on-demand capacity, not provisioned; on-demand does not have provisioned write capacity. Option D is incorrect because auto scaling is not applicable for on-demand tables; on-demand automatically scales, but still has a limit based on previous peak.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
A sudden spike in write traffic exceeds the table's burst capacity
Why this is correct
On-demand tables have a throughput limit based on previous traffic; spikes beyond that cause throttling.
- ✗
The table is using DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) for writes
Why it's wrong here
DAX is a cache for reads, not writes.
- ✗
The write workload exceeds the table's provisioned write capacity
Why it's wrong here
On-demand does not use provisioned capacity.
- ✗
The table has auto scaling disabled
Why it's wrong here
On-demand automatically scales.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every SAP-C02 question from scratch — 1,660 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SAP-C02 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 SAP-C02 exam.