Background
Amazon DynamoDB is a fast and flexible NoSQL database service for all applications that need consistent, single-digit millisecond latency at any scale. It is a fully managed cloud database and supports both document and key-value store models. Its flexible data model, reliable performance, and automatic scaling of throughput capacity make it a great fit for mobile, web, gaming, ad tech, IoT, and many other applications.
In this post, I will show you how to calculate read and write provisioned throughput for Dynamo DB. This is a very common question asked in "AWS Certified Developer - Associate" exam. I will also show you some of the examples to fully understand the calculations.
AWS allows us to change the read and write capacity unity of DynamoDB which lets us scale the DB based on our requirements.
But the major question is how do you come up with this capacity unit values which is exactly what we are going to see below.
DynamoDB read and write provisioned throughput calculations
Before we head on to the calculation part let's try to understand some details about read and write throughputs in DynamoDB.
- Read provisioned throughput :
- All reads are rounded to increments of 4 KB
- Eventual consistent reads (default) consist of 2 reads per second
- Strongly consistent reads consist of 1 read per second
- Write provisioned throughput:
- All writes are rounded to increments of 1 KB
- All writes consists of 1 write per second
Now let's see how we can compute read provisioned throughput -
DynamoDB read provisioned throughput calculation
- Find the read units required per item. For this, you need to round the item size to the nearest chunk of 4KB and then divide by 4. For example, if you each item size if 6KB then the nearest 4KB chunk would be 8KB and the read units required would be 8 / 4 = 2. Another example, if your item size is 1KB then your nearest 4KB chunk is 4KB and the read units required are 4 /4 =1. Let's call this value X.
- Now you need to calculate a number of items read per second. For example, if you are reading 120 items per minute then the number of items read per second is 120/60 = 2. Let's call this value Y.
- Your read capacity unit for strongly consistent reads would be (X*Y).
- If you are using eventual consistent reads then divide above number by 2 to get the read provisioned throughput i.e (X*Y)/2. This is because for eventual consistency case there are 2 reads per second. So to get read throughput you need to divide by 2.
Let's take some example to understand this better.
Q1. Let's say you have an application that requires to read 20 items of 2 KB per second using eventual consistent reads. What read throughout value should be set?
A. Our item size is 2KB per second. So let's first round it to nearest 4KB chunk which is nothing but 4KB. Now to get read units per item we divide by 4. So 4 /4 = 1. This is our X if you are following above method. Now the number of items read is 20 per second which is our Y. So X* Y = 1 * 20 = 20. Finally, we are saying reads are eventually consistent which means we need to divide above value further by 2. So the final read throughput is 20 / 2 = 10.
Let's see another example -
Q2. Let's say you have an application that requires to read 10 items of 10 KB per second using eventual consistent reads. What read throughout value should be set?
A. Our item size is 10KB per second. So let's first round it to nearest 4KB chunk which is nothing but 12KB. Now to get read units per item we divide by 4. So 12 /4 = 3. This is our X if you are following above method. Now the number of items read is 10 per second which is our Y. So X* Y = 3 * 10 = 30. Finally, we are saying reads are eventually consistent which means we need to divide above value further by 2. So the final read throughput is 30 / 2 = 15.
Now let's see an example with strong consistency.
Q3. Let's say you have an application that requires to read 5 items of 6 KB per second using strongly consistent reads. What read throughout value should be set?
A. Our item size is 6KB per second. So let's first round it to nearest 4KB chunk which is nothing but 8KB. Now to get read units per item we divide by 4. So 8 /4 = 2. This is our X if you are following above method. Now the number of items read is 5 per second which is our Y. So X* Y = 2 * 5 = 10. Finally, since the reads are strongly consistent you do not need to divide the result by 3. So the final read throughput is 10.
DynamoDB write provisioned throughput calculation
- Find the write units required per item. Since each write unit is 1 KB you can directly use the actual size of an item in KB as the read unit per item. For example, if you each item size if 6KB then the write units required would be 6. Another example, if your item size is 12KB then your the write units required are 12. Let's call this value X.
- Now you need to calculate a number of items read per second. For example, if you are reading 120 items per minute then the number of items read per second is 120/60 = 2. Let's call this value Y.
- Your write capacity unit for strongly consistent reads would be (X*Y). There is no notion of strongly consistent or eventually consistent write.
Let's see some examples for this.
Q1. You have an application that writes 10 items where each item is 11 KB in size per second. What should be the write throughput set to?
A. Since item size is 11 KB and each write unit is of 1KB we need 11 write units per item. This is our X. We also know the application is writing 10 items per second to the DB which is our Y value. So the write throughout is X * Y = 11 * 10 = 110.
Let's see another example -
Q2. You have an application that writes 100 items where each item is 10 KB in size per second. What should be the write throughput set to?
A. Since item size is 10 KB and each write unit is of 1KB we need 10 write units per item. This is our X. We also know the application is writing 100 items per second to the DB which is our Y value. So the write throughout is X * Y = 10 * 100 = 1000.
NOTE: Each item is nothing but a row in DynamoDB.
