DynamoDB Throughput Exceeded Exception Error

Question

I doubt if it's true or my understanding is not correct of this statement in DynamoDB. It says,

ProvisionedThroughputExceededException Message: You exceeded your maximum allowed provisioned throughput for a table or for one or more global secondary indexes. To view performance metrics for provisioned throughput vs. consumed throughput, open the Amazon CloudWatch console.

Example: Your request rate is too high. The AWS SDKs for DynamoDB automatically retry requests that receive this exception. Your request is eventually successful, unless your retry queue is too large to finish. Reduce the frequency of requests, using Error Retries and Exponential Backoff.

Q1: Is it retrying on its own when the exception occurs? Im just afraid maybe the data will not be inserted.

Please help me. :D Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Yes the SDK will retry automatically, but the key thing to know is that by the time the app sees the provisioned throughput exceeded exception, the default max retries have already been exceeded. If you get that exception, your app needs to handle it and optionally attempt the operation again. Also, know that exponential backoffs may not be the fastest way to get your operations to DynamoDB, so depending on your use case, and if ultimate speed is critical to your app, it might be better to disable retries and write your own retry strategy.