DEA-C01 Data Store Management Practice Question
A company is migrating an on-premises MySQL database to Amazon RDS for MySQL. The database is 500 GB in size. The migration must have minimal downtime and must be completed within a week. Which AWS service should the data engineer use to perform the migration?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse AWS DataSync (a file-transfer service) with database migration, or assume Snowball Edge is required for any migration over a few hundred gigabytes, when in fact DMS with CDC is the appropriate service for minimizing downtime in database migrations even with moderate data sizes.
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
✓
AWS Database Migration Service (DMS).
AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) is the correct choice because it is specifically designed for migrating databases to AWS with minimal downtime. DMS can perform a full load of the 500 GB MySQL database and then continuously replicate ongoing changes from the on-premises source to the Amazon RDS target using change data capture (CDC), allowing the migration to complete within a week with near-zero downtime.
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 Transfer Acceleration.
Why it's wrong here
Transfer Acceleration speeds up uploads to S3, not database migration.
- ✗
AWS Snowball Edge.
Why it's wrong here
Snowball is for offline data transfer and does not provide minimal downtime.
- ✗
AWS DataSync.
Why it's wrong here
DataSync is for file storage, not database migration.
- ✓
AWS Database Migration Service (DMS).
Why this is correct
DMS supports ongoing replication for minimal downtime.
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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.