Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Tools for auto-scaling
We know that while creating a table in DynamoDB, we have to give information about the
read and write capacity units. We also know that we can increase or decrease the value of
read and write capacity units anytime depending on our need, but what if the demand bursts
suddenly? And before you log in to the DynamoDB console and increase the provisioned
throughput, we could lose some valuable requests coming from various clients. And losing
any such data may cost a lot for any enterprise. So how do we solve this problem? Is there
any tool available that would automatically increase the demand before the burst and re-
duce the demand whenever there are not many requests coming in? The answer is, yes!
Now, let's discuss one such tool.
Dynamic DynamoDB
We have a community-contributed tool that automatically scales the DynamoDB provi-
sioned throughput, and the name of that tool is Dynamic DynamoDB. This tool includes
the following features:
• This tool automatically scales the tables up and down.
• There is a provision to restrict auto-scaling for a certain time slot.
• It's easy to use and integrate with your application.
• There is a provision to set maximum and minimum read and write capacity.
• This tool provides the functionality of monitoring multiple DynamoDB tables at a
time.
• This tool gives you notifications on scale up or scale down of provisioned through-
put.
• This tool checks if the application is up and running before doing any scale up/
down activities. This can be helpful if your application is facing some other issues,
because of which the requests are low.
There are various ways of using Dynamic DynamoDB. One of them is to use a CloudForm-
ation template that launches a
t1.micro
EC2 instance with preconfigured Dynamic Dy-
namoDB. Another way is to install the tool by cloning it from Git repo.
The CloudFormation template is available at
http://raw.github.com/sebdah/dynamic-dy-
To install Dynamic DynamoDB manually you can refer to
http://dynamic-dy-
