DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A company is designing a data lake on Amazon S3. The data ingestion pipeline must handle both structured and unstructured data. The data must be cataloged for easy discovery. Which THREE services should be included in the solution? (Choose THREE.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse Amazon Redshift as a data lake solution because it can query data in S3 via Redshift Spectrum, but it is not a cataloging service and does not handle unstructured data ingestion natively, making it incorrect for this specific requirement.
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 S3
Amazon S3 is the core storage layer for the data lake, providing scalable, durable, and cost-effective object storage for both structured and unstructured data. AWS Glue Data Catalog acts as the central metadata repository, enabling data discovery and schema management across the data lake. Amazon Athena allows serverless querying of data directly from S3 using standard SQL, leveraging the Glue Data Catalog for schema-on-read, which is essential for easy discovery and analysis.
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 S3
Why this is correct
S3 is the core storage for data lakes.
- ✓
AWS Glue Data Catalog
Why this is correct
Glue catalog provides metadata for discovery.
- ✓
Amazon Athena
Why this is correct
Athena can query data directly from S3 using the catalog.
- ✗
Amazon RDS
Why it's wrong here
RDS is not suitable for a data lake; it's for transactional data.
- ✗
Amazon Redshift
Why it's wrong here
Redshift is a data warehouse, not a data lake.
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 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.