title: Why playing with AWS DynamoDb "Hello world" produces read/write alarms?
body: <p>I'v started to play with DynamoDb and I'v created "dynamo-test" table with hash PK on userid and couple more columns (age, name). Read and write capacity is set to 5. I use Lambda and API Gateway with Node.js. Then I manually performed several API calls through API gateway using similar payload:</p>
  
  <pre><code>{
    "userId" : "222",
     "name" : "Test",
     "age" : 34
   }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'v tried to insert the same item couple times (which didn't produce error but silently succeeded.) Also, I used DynamoDb console and browsed for inserted items several times (currently there are 2 only). I haven't tracked how many times exactly I did those actions, but that was done completely manually. And then after an hour, I'v noticed 2 alarms in CloudWatch:</p>
  
  <p>INSUFFICIENT_DATA
  dynamo-test-ReadCapacityUnitsLimit-BasicAlarm
  ConsumedReadCapacityUnits >= 240 for 12 minutes
  No notifications</p>
  
  <p>And the similar alarm with "...WriteCapacityLimit...". Write capacity become OK after 2 mins, but then went back again after 10 mins. Anyway, I'm still reading and learning how to plan and monitor these capacities, but this hello world example scared me a bit if I'v exceeded my table's capacity :) Please, point me to the right direction if I'm missing some fundamental part!</p>