AWS Certified Database - Specialty Exam: Caching Strategy for Amazon ElastiCache

Caching Strategy for Amazon ElastiCache

Question

An application team wishes to use Amazon ElastiCache to improve their application performance.

The application frequently requests the same items.

The team wants to minimize cache space utilization and infrastructure costs.

Which caching strategy should the team employ?

Answers

Explanations

Click on the arrows to vote for the correct answer

A. B. C. D.

Answer: B.

Option A is incorrect because, with the Write-Through caching strategy, the data in the cache is updated every time it's written to the database.

This means data that is not frequently read is also stored in the cache, thus using up cache space.

Option B is CORRECT because Lazy Loading caching strategy loads data into the cache only when the application requests it.

Thus, it reduces the use of cache space by items not frequently requested.

Option C is incorrect because the Write-Around caching pattern is a form of the Write-Through caching strategy.

Option D is incorrect because Write-Back caching pattern is a form of the Write-Through caching strategy.

Reference:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonElastiCache/latest/mem-ug/Strategies.html

When it comes to caching strategies in Amazon ElastiCache, the most important consideration is the specific use case of the application. Different strategies have varying levels of impact on cache space utilization and infrastructure costs.

Let's examine the caching strategies mentioned in the question:

A. Write-Through: In this strategy, every write operation to the database is also written to the cache. This ensures that the cache is always up-to-date with the latest data in the database. However, this can lead to high cache space utilization and infrastructure costs since all data is cached, even if it is infrequently accessed.

B. Lazy Loading: In this strategy, the cache is only populated with data when it is requested by the application. This helps to minimize cache space utilization and infrastructure costs, but can result in longer response times for the first request since the data has to be fetched from the database.

C. Write-Around: In this strategy, data is only cached after it has been written to the database. This can help to prevent cache space utilization and infrastructure costs from becoming too high, but it can also result in longer response times for the first request.

D. Write-Back: In this strategy, data is written to the cache first, and then asynchronously written to the database. This can help to minimize response times, but can also lead to data inconsistencies if the cache and database become out of sync.

Based on the application team's requirements to minimize cache space utilization and infrastructure costs, the most appropriate caching strategy would be Lazy Loading (B). This strategy only populates the cache with data when it is requested, which helps to minimize the amount of data stored in the cache and reduce infrastructure costs. Additionally, since the application frequently requests the same items, the response time for subsequent requests will be faster since the data will be cached.