Cross-region replication (Global Tables) in DynamoDB - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Cross-region Replication with DynamoDB Global Tables

📖 Scenario: You work for a company that wants to keep its customer data available and synchronized across two different regions to improve reliability and speed for users worldwide.

🎯 Goal: Create a DynamoDB Global Table that replicates data between two regions automatically.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a DynamoDB table named Customers with a primary key CustomerID (string).

Add a replica configuration for the us-west-2 region.

Enable cross-region replication to keep data synchronized between us-east-1 and us-west-2.

Verify the table has the correct replica settings.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Global Tables help companies keep data synchronized across multiple geographic regions, improving application availability and reducing latency for users worldwide.

💼 Career

Understanding how to configure and manage DynamoDB Global Tables is important for cloud engineers and database administrators working with AWS to build scalable, resilient applications.

1

Create the base DynamoDB table in us-east-1

Create a DynamoDB table named Customers in the us-east-1 region with a primary key called CustomerID of type string.

DynamoDB

# Your code here to create the Customers table with CustomerID as the primary key in us-east-1

Need a hint?

Use the AWS CLI create-table command with the correct attribute and key schema.

2

Add replica configuration for us-west-2 region

Add a replica configuration to the Customers table for the us-west-2 region to enable cross-region replication.

DynamoDB

aws dynamodb create-table \
    --table-name Customers \
    --attribute-definitions AttributeName=CustomerID,AttributeType=S \
    --key-schema AttributeName=CustomerID,KeyType=HASH \
    --billing-mode PAY_PER_REQUEST \
    --region us-east-1
# Your code here to add replica for us-west-2

Need a hint?

Use the --replica-configurations option to specify the replica region.

3

Enable cross-region replication

Use the AWS CLI to update the Customers table in us-east-1 to add a replica in us-west-2 region, enabling cross-region replication.

DynamoDB

aws dynamodb create-table \
    --table-name Customers \
    --attribute-definitions AttributeName=CustomerID,AttributeType=S \
    --key-schema AttributeName=CustomerID,KeyType=HASH \
    --billing-mode PAY_PER_REQUEST \
    --replica-configurations RegionName=us-west-2 \
    --region us-east-1
# Your code here to update the table and enable replication

Need a hint?

Use the update-table command with --replica-updates to add the replica.

4

Verify the Global Table replica settings

Use the AWS CLI to describe the Customers table in us-east-1 and verify that the replica for us-west-2 is configured.

DynamoDB

aws dynamodb update-table \
    --table-name Customers \
    --region us-east-1 \
    --replica-updates '[{"Create":{"RegionName":"us-west-2"}}]'
# Your code here to describe the table and check replicas

Need a hint?

Use the describe-table command to see the replica configuration details.