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DynamoDB Table – Monitor Table Read Capacity

This check ensures that DynamoDB table read capacity usage is actively monitored. Monitoring read capacity helps detect throttling issues, performance bottlenecks, and unexpected workload spikes.

Check Details

  • Resource: DynamoDB Table
  • Check: Monitor DynamoDB table read capacity
  • Risk: Read throttling and degraded application performance

Remediation via AWS Console

  1. Log in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon DynamoDB console. Amazon DynamoDB Console
  2. In the left navigation panel, click Tables and select the affected DynamoDB table.
  3. Open the Monitor tab.
  4. Ensure the following metric is visible and updating:
    • ConsumedReadCapacityUnits
    Consumed read capacity metric

Monitoring via AWS CLI

  1. Log in to the AWS Management Console and click the CloudShell icon (>_) in the top-right corner. AWS CloudShell
  2. Describe DynamoDB tables in the region:
    
    
    aws dynamodb list-tables
    
  3. Monitor read capacity using CloudWatch metrics:
    
    
    aws cloudwatch get-metric-statistics \
     --namespace AWS/DynamoDB \
     --metric-name ConsumedReadCapacityUnits \
     --dimensions Name=TableName,Value=<table-name> \
     --statistics Sum \
     --period 300 \
     --start-time $(date -u -d '15 minutes ago' +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ) \
     --end-time $(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ)
    

Regularly review read capacity metrics and configure CloudWatch alarms to proactively detect throttling or abnormal usage patterns.