This DEA-C01 practice question tests your understanding of data store management. Match the stated requirement to the specific cloud service, access model, or configuration option — many options are valid in isolation but not for this scenario. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A company is migrating its on-premises PostgreSQL database to Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. The database is 5 TB in size and supports a critical application that requires less than 30 minutes of downtime. The company has a 1 Gbps network connection to AWS. The data engineering team plans to use AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) with change data capture (CDC) to keep the target in sync. During the full load phase, DMS is taking longer than expected, and the team is concerned about meeting the downtime window. Which action should the team take to speed up the full load?
Increase the compute capacity of the target RDS instance.
Why wrong: May not improve DMS throughput significantly.
Enable DMS validation to ensure data integrity.
Why wrong: Validation adds overhead and slows migration.
Use AWS Snowball Edge to transfer the data offline.
Why wrong: Offline transfer increases downtime.
Create multiple DMS tasks to load different tables in parallel.
Parallel tasks increase throughput.
Answer choices
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
Create multiple DMS tasks to load different tables in parallel.
Creating multiple DMS tasks to load different tables in parallel (Option D) is the correct action because DMS performs full load sequentially within a single task. By splitting tables across multiple tasks, the team can parallelize the data transfer, utilizing the 1 Gbps network more efficiently and reducing the overall full load time to meet the 30-minute downtime window.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
Increase the compute capacity of the target RDS instance.
Why it's wrong here
May not improve DMS throughput significantly.
Enable DMS validation to ensure data integrity.
Why it's wrong here
Validation adds overhead and slows migration.
Use AWS Snowball Edge to transfer the data offline.
Why it's wrong here
Offline transfer increases downtime.
Create multiple DMS tasks to load different tables in parallel.
Why this is correct
Parallel tasks increase throughput.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Common exam traps
The trap here is that candidates assume increasing target instance size (Option A) will speed up the full load, but they overlook that DMS's single-task architecture is the primary bottleneck, not the target's write capacity.
Detailed technical explanation
DMS full load uses a single thread per task to capture and apply data, which limits throughput to the speed of the slowest table. By creating multiple tasks, each with its own connection and thread, the team can achieve near-linear scaling up to the network bandwidth limit. In practice, the number of parallel tasks should be tuned to avoid overwhelming the source database with too many concurrent connections, which could cause performance degradation.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
An e-commerce site experiences heavy traffic on Black Friday and near-zero traffic during off-peak weeks. Rather than provisioning permanent large VMs, the team uses auto-scaling groups that add capacity automatically under load and reduce it overnight. Questions like this test whether you understand elasticity, availability zones, and cloud compute scaling patterns.
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FAQ
Data Store Management — This question tests Data Store Management — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
The correct answer is: Create multiple DMS tasks to load different tables in parallel. — Creating multiple DMS tasks to load different tables in parallel (Option D) is the correct action because DMS performs full load sequentially within a single task. By splitting tables across multiple tasks, the team can parallelize the data transfer, utilizing the 1 Gbps network more efficiently and reducing the overall full load time to meet the 30-minute downtime window.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Last reviewed: Jun 24, 2026
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.
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