Achieving Microsecond Response Times with DynamoDB
Question
A company currently has an application that works with DynamoDB.
The application is a high revenue generating application for the company.
Their current response time for their read workloads is in the order of milliseconds.
But to bump up hits to their pages, they want to reduce the response time to microseconds.
Which of the following would you suggest to be most preferably used with DynamoDB to fulfill this requirement?
Answers
Explanations
Click on the arrows to vote for the correct answer
A. B. C. D.Answer - C.
The AWS Documentation mentions the following.
DynamoDB Accelerator(DAX) is a DynamoDB-compatible caching service that enables you to benefit from fast in-memory performance for demanding applications.
DAX addresses three core scenarios.
As an in-memory cache, DAX reduces the response times of eventually-consistent read workloads by order of magnitude, from single-digit milliseconds to microseconds.
DAX reduces operational and application complexity by providing a managed service that is API-compatible with Amazon DynamoDB.
Thus it requires only minimal functional changes to use with an existing application.
Option A is invalid because ElastiCache would not guarantee for certain such a great reduction in response times.
The question also asks for a "preferred" service to be used along with DynamoDB, for which DAX would be a better answer than Elasticache.
Option B is invalid because it is used when you want to make replicas of the tables in different regions.
Option D is invalid because this option is used only when you have throttling errors for the table.
For more information on DAX, please refer to the below URL-
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/DAX.htmlTo reduce the response time to microseconds, we need to improve the performance of the DynamoDB application. The following are the available options:
A. Deploying an ElastiCache in front of DynamoDB: Amazon ElastiCache is a web service that makes it easy to deploy, operate, and scale an in-memory data store. ElastiCache can be used to store frequently accessed data in memory, which can help reduce the response time of the application. However, ElastiCache cannot reduce the response time to microseconds. The typical response time for ElastiCache is in the range of milliseconds.
B. Using DynamoDB global tables: DynamoDB Global Tables can be used to replicate data across multiple regions, which can help reduce the response time of the application by providing faster access to data. However, this solution does not directly address the requirement to reduce the response time to microseconds.
C. Using DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX): DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) is an in-memory cache for DynamoDB that can help reduce the response time to microseconds. DAX caches frequently accessed data in memory, which can help reduce the number of requests to DynamoDB and improve the response time of the application.
D. Using a higher throughput for the tables: Increasing the provisioned throughput for the DynamoDB tables can help improve the performance of the application. However, this solution does not directly address the requirement to reduce the response time to microseconds.
Based on the above options, the most suitable option to reduce the response time to microseconds for the DynamoDB application is to use DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX).
