Question 143 of 1,711
DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A company is using Amazon Kinesis Data Streams with a Lambda consumer to process clickstream data. The data rate is high and the Lambda function is falling behind, resulting in increased processing latency. What is the MOST effective way to improve throughput?
⚠ Common exam trap
The DEA-C01 exam often tests the misconception that Lambda performance tuning (memory/timeout) is the primary solution for stream processing backpressure, when in fact the shard count is the fundamental parallelism bottleneck in Kinesis Data Streams with a Lambda consumer.
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
✓
Increase the number of shards in the Kinesis stream.
Increasing the number of shards in the Kinesis stream increases the stream's total read capacity, allowing more concurrent Lambda invocations to process records in parallel. Since each shard supports up to 5 read transactions per second and a maximum of 2 MB/s read throughput, adding shards directly raises the aggregate throughput, enabling the Lambda consumer to keep up with the high data rate.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Increase the memory allocated to the Lambda function.
Why it's wrong here
Memory increase may help but not as effectively as shard count.
- ✗
Increase the Lambda function timeout.
Why it's wrong here
Timeout doesn't increase throughput.
- ✗
Use Kinesis Data Firehose instead of Lambda.
Why it's wrong here
Firehose is for delivery, not custom processing.
- ✓
Increase the number of shards in the Kinesis stream.
Why this is correct
More shards increase parallelism and throughput.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
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Last reviewed: Jul 4, 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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