DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A company needs to ingest data from an on-premises Hadoop cluster into Amazon S3 for archival and analysis. The total data volume is 50 TB. The migration must be completed within one week. The on-premises network has a 1 Gbps connection to AWS. Which AWS service should be used?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates assume a 1 Gbps connection is fast enough for 50 TB in a week, ignoring real-world throughput limitations (e.g., TCP overhead, competing traffic) and the need for a guaranteed completion window, which makes Snowball Edge the safer choice.
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 Snowball Edge
AWS Snowball Edge is the correct choice because it is designed for large-scale data transfers (50 TB) over slow or unreliable networks. With a 1 Gbps connection, transferring 50 TB would take approximately 5 days under ideal conditions, but real-world factors (e.g., network congestion, protocol overhead) make it risky to complete within one week. Snowball Edge physically ships the data, bypassing network constraints entirely.
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 Transfer Family
Why it's wrong here
Transfer Family is for managed file transfers, not bulk data migration.
- ✓
AWS Snowball Edge
Why this is correct
Snowball can physically ship data for large transfers.
- ✗
AWS Glue
Why it's wrong here
Glue is not a data transfer service.
- ✗
AWS DataSync
Why it's wrong here
1 Gbps = ~10 TB/day theoretical, but real-world constraints may exceed a week.
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 |
Go deeper
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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.