Error: DynamoDB Auto Scaling Not Working

What's Causing This Error

After turning on auto-scaling, you may encounter situations where your read/write activities get throttled, and the scaling does not work as initially intended. This might happen when your work is not staying elevated for a long time. The provisional throughput is modified by DynamoDB auto-scaling only when the workload remains elevated or depressed for a few minutes.

Solution: Here's How To Resolve It

DynamoDB auto scaling creates CloudWatch alarms to trigger auto-scaling. So, ensure that you do not delete any of these alarms. If you delete them, auto-scaling will not function as you expect. If you accidentally deleted these alarms, you can disable and enable auto-scaling once again, which will recreate the CloudWatch alarms.

However, suppose your elevation or depression of workload is limited to a short time. In that case, auto-scaling will not work properly as it is not the best in handling short-duration activity spikes.

You can read more about auto-scaling issues and their resolution here.