How to auto scale Amazon DynamoDB throughput?

Question

Amazon DynamoDB doesn’t provide inbuild capabilities to auto tune throughput based on Dynamic Load. It provide API to increase or Decrease throughput. Customers are being c

Answer 1

AWS added native auto scaling support for DynamoDB in June 2017. The following code (source) provides an example of how to configure auto scaling using the Java SDK:

package com.amazonaws.codesamples.autoscaling;

import com.amazonaws.services.applicationautoscaling.AWSApplicationAutoScalingClient;
import com.amazonaws.services.applicationautoscaling.model.DescribeScalableTargetsRequest;
import com.amazonaws.services.applicationautoscaling.model.DescribeScalableTargetsResult;
import com.amazonaws.services.applicationautoscaling.model.DescribeScalingPoliciesRequest;
import com.amazonaws.services.applicationautoscaling.model.DescribeScalingPoliciesResult;
import com.amazonaws.services.applicationautoscaling.model.MetricType;
import com.amazonaws.services.applicationautoscaling.model.PolicyType;
import com.amazonaws.services.applicationautoscaling.model.PredefinedMetricSpecification;
import com.amazonaws.services.applicationautoscaling.model.PutScalingPolicyRequest;
import com.amazonaws.services.applicationautoscaling.model.RegisterScalableTargetRequest;
import com.amazonaws.services.applicationautoscaling.model.ScalableDimension;
import com.amazonaws.services.applicationautoscaling.model.ServiceNamespace;
import com.amazonaws.services.applicationautoscaling.model.TargetTrackingScalingPolicyConfiguration;

public class EnableDynamoDBAutoscaling {

    static AWSApplicationAutoScalingClient aaClient = new AWSApplicationAutoScalingClient();

    public static void main(String args[]) {

        ServiceNamespace ns = ServiceNamespace.Dynamodb;
        ScalableDimension tableWCUs = ScalableDimension.DynamodbTableWriteCapacityUnits;
        String resourceID = "table/TestTable";

        // Define the scalable target
        RegisterScalableTargetRequest rstRequest = new RegisterScalableTargetRequest()
            .withServiceNamespace(ns)
            .withResourceId(resourceID)
            .withScalableDimension(tableWCUs)
            .withMinCapacity(5)
            .withMaxCapacity(10)
            .withRoleARN("SERVICE_ROLE_ARN_GOES_HERE");

        try {
            aaClient.registerScalableTarget(rstRequest);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            System.err.println("Unable to register scalable target: ");
            System.err.println(e.getMessage());
        }

        // Verify that the target was created
        DescribeScalableTargetsRequest dscRequest = new DescribeScalableTargetsRequest()
            .withServiceNamespace(ns)
            .withScalableDimension(tableWCUs)
            .withResourceIds(resourceID);

        try {
            DescribeScalableTargetsResult dsaResult = aaClient.describeScalableTargets(dscRequest);
            System.out.println("DescribeScalableTargets result: ");
            System.out.println(dsaResult);
            System.out.println();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            System.err.println("Unable to describe scalable target: ");
            System.err.println(e.getMessage());
        }

        System.out.println();

        // Configure a scaling policy
        TargetTrackingScalingPolicyConfiguration targetTrackingScalingPolicyConfiguration = 
            new TargetTrackingScalingPolicyConfiguration()
            .withPredefinedMetricSpecification(
                new PredefinedMetricSpecification()
                .withPredefinedMetricType(MetricType. DynamoDBWriteCapacityUtilization))
            .withTargetValue(50.0)
            .withScaleInCooldown(60)
            .withScaleOutCooldown(60);

        // Create the scaling policy, based on your configuration
        PutScalingPolicyRequest pspRequest = new PutScalingPolicyRequest()
            .withServiceNamespace(ns)
            .withScalableDimension(tableWCUs)
            .withResourceId(resourceID)
            .withPolicyName("MyScalingPolicy")
            .withPolicyType(PolicyType.TargetTrackingScaling)
            .withTargetTrackingScalingPolicyConfiguration(targetTrackingScalingPolicyConfiguration);

        try {
            aaClient.putScalingPolicy(pspRequest);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            System.err.println("Unable to put scaling policy: ");
            System.err.println(e.getMessage());
        }

        // Verify that the scaling policy was created
        DescribeScalingPoliciesRequest dspRequest = new DescribeScalingPoliciesRequest()
            .withServiceNamespace(ns)
            .withScalableDimension(tableWCUs)
            .withResourceId(resourceID);

        try {
            DescribeScalingPoliciesResult dspResult = aaClient.describeScalingPolicies(dspRequest);
            System.out.println("DescribeScalingPolicies result: ");
            System.out.println(dspResult);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
            System.err.println("Unable to describe scaling policy: ");
            System.err.println(e.getMessage());
        }            
    }
}

This code requires that you supply an ARN for a valid Application Auto Scaling service role. Replace SERVICE_ROLE_ARN_GOES_HERE with the actual ARN.