Updating throughput in DynamoDB global secondary indexes with boto

I was having trouble with updating a Global Secondary Index (GSI) in AWS DynamoDB. But I got this gist from @toastdriven to kick me in the right direction. Here’s how you do it with the boto.dynamodb2 library.

First off, make sure that you have the latest boto (at least 2.20.1) release, as it has support for DynamoDB GSI.

pip install -U boto

My table looks like this when described:

	In [35]: table.describe()
	Out[35]:
	{u'Table': {u'AttributeDefinitions': [{u'AttributeName': u'Subject',
	u'AttributeType': u'S'},
	{u'AttributeName': u'postDate', u'AttributeType': u'S'},
	{u'AttributeName': u'postId', u'AttributeType': u'N'}],
	u'CreationDateTime': 1386880069.946,
	u'GlobalSecondaryIndexes': [{u'IndexName': u'gsiPosts',
	u'IndexSizeBytes': 204,
	u'IndexStatus': u'ACTIVE',
	u'ItemCount': 5,
	u'KeySchema': [{u'AttributeName': u'postId', u'KeyType': u'HASH'},
	{u'AttributeName': u'Subject', u'KeyType': u'RANGE'}],
	u'Projection': {u'ProjectionType': u'KEYS_ONLY'},
	u'ProvisionedThroughput': {u'ReadCapacityUnits': 1,
	u'WriteCapacityUnits': 1}}],
	u'ItemCount': 5,
	u'KeySchema': [{u'AttributeName': u'postId', u'KeyType': u'HASH'},
	{u'AttributeName': u'postDate', u'KeyType': u'RANGE'}],
	u'LocalSecondaryIndexes': [{u'IndexName': u'lsiPosts',
	u'IndexSizeBytes': 244,
	u'ItemCount': 5,
	u'KeySchema': [{u'AttributeName': u'postId', u'KeyType': u'HASH'},
	{u'AttributeName': u'postDate', u'KeyType': u'RANGE'}],
	u'Projection': {u'ProjectionType': u'ALL'}}],
	u'ProvisionedThroughput': {u'LastDecreaseDateTime': 1387214748.435,
	u'NumberOfDecreasesToday': 0,
	u'ReadCapacityUnits': 1,
	u'WriteCapacityUnits': 1},
	u'TableName': u'MailPostsExperimet',
	u'TableSizeBytes': 244,
	u'TableStatus': u'ACTIVE'}}

view raw ipython-output.py hosted with ❤ by GitHub

You can see that the table is called MailPostsExperimet and my only GSI is called gsiPosts. The GSI has a read/write provisioning of 1/1 initially. To increase the provisioning run:

	connection.update_table(
	table_name='MailPostsExperimet',
	global_secondary_index_updates=[
	{
	"Update": {
	"IndexName": "gsiPosts",
	"ProvisionedThroughput": {
	"ReadCapacityUnits": 2,
	"WriteCapacityUnits": 2
	}
	}
	}
	]
	)

view raw example-update.py hosted with ❤ by GitHub

That’s it!