CLF-C02 Cloud Technology and Services Practice Question
A company needs to process and analyze streaming log data from thousands of servers in near real-time, loading the results into Amazon Redshift for dashboards. Which AWS service is designed for this streaming ETL delivery use case?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse Kinesis Data Streams (raw ingestion) with Kinesis Data Firehose (managed ETL delivery), assuming both can directly load into Redshift, but only Firehose provides the built-in COPY command integration and automatic transformation capabilities.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose is the correct choice because it is a fully managed service designed specifically for streaming ETL (extract, transform, load) delivery. It can capture, transform (e.g., convert to Parquet/ORC, perform Lambda-based data transformation), and automatically load streaming data into Amazon Redshift, Amazon S3, or Amazon OpenSearch Service in near real-time, with no ongoing administration required.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams
Why it's wrong here
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams captures and stores streaming data but lacks built-in transformation logic for ETL; it requires a separate consumer, such as a Lambda function, to process and load data into Amazon Redshift, adding latency that conflicts with the near-real-time requirement. It is tempting because it is designed for real-time ingestion of log data from many sources, and would be correct if the scenario only needed raw data capture without integrated transformation and loading into a data warehouse.
- ✓
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose
Why this is correct
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose is a fully managed streaming ETL service that ingests continuous data, optionally transforms it with Lambda, and delivers it to destinations including Amazon Redshift. It satisfies the stem's near real-time streaming ETL requirement without managing consumers or shards.
- ✗
AWS Glue
Why it's wrong here
AWS Glue is a serverless batch-oriented ETL and data catalogue service; its streaming capability runs on Spark micro-batches and does not deliver the continuous, low-latency ingestion the scenario demands. It is tempting because Glue performs ETL into Redshift, but Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose is purpose-built for near-real-time streaming delivery.
- ✗
Amazon MSK
Why it's wrong here
Amazon MSK provides managed Apache Kafka brokers for ingesting and buffering streams, but it does not itself run the ETL transformation or load results into Redshift. It is tempting because Kafka is the canonical streaming ingestion layer, and would be correct when the requirement is durable, replayable event streaming rather than managed stream processing.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CLF-C02 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the CLF-C02 exam.