DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A company is designing a data ingestion pipeline for real-time sensor data from thousands of devices. The data must be processed with low latency and stored in Amazon S3. Which TWO services would be appropriate for this use case? (Choose TWO.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates choose only one streaming service, but the question requires two services, and the correct pairing is Kinesis Data Streams for real-time ingestion and Kinesis Data Firehose for delivery to S3, as Firehose alone cannot provide sub-second latency.
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 to ingest real-time streaming data, transform it on the fly (e.g., convert to Parquet/ORC), and deliver it directly to Amazon S3 with low latency. It handles buffering, compression, and partitioning automatically, making it ideal for the described sensor data pipeline.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
AWS Glue
Why it's wrong here
AWS Glue is designed for batch-oriented extract, transform, and load (ETL) jobs that run on a schedule or trigger, not for continuous ingestion of real-time sensor data requiring sub-second latency; its Spark-based processing introduces startup overhead and lacks native streaming semantics. It is tempting because Glue can read from streaming sources like Amazon Kinesis, but it still operates in micro-batch mode rather than true event-by-event processing, making it unsuitable for low-latency pipelines where Amazon Kinesis Data Streams or Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka would be the correct choice.
- ✗
AWS DataSync
Why it's wrong here
DataSync is for batch data transfer, not real-time.
- ✗
Amazon Athena
Why it's wrong here
Athena is for querying data in S3, not for ingestion.
- ✓
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose
Why this is correct
Firehose can deliver streaming data to S3 with buffering.
- ✓
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams
Why this is correct
Kinesis Data Streams can ingest high-throughput streaming data.
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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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DEA-C01 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 DEA-C01 exam.