DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A company needs to ingest streaming data from thousands of IoT devices into Amazon S3 for long-term storage and analytics. The data arrives continuously at a rate of 5 MB per second and must be stored in a compressed format to reduce storage costs. The solution should be highly available and require minimal management. Which AWS service should the company use?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is assuming that Kinesis Data Streams with Lambda is equivalent to Firehose, but Firehose provides built-in compression and delivery to S3 without custom code.
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 Kinesis Data Firehose with a delivery stream to Amazon S3, enabling compression.
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose is designed for streaming data ingestion to destinations like S3. It automatically handles scaling, buffering, compression, and encryption. With compression enabled, data is stored in GZIP format, reducing storage costs. It requires no infrastructure management, making it the simplest and most cost-effective solution for continuous IoT data ingestion to S3.
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 Kinesis Data Streams with an AWS Lambda consumer that writes to Amazon S3.
Why it's wrong here
Kinesis Data Streams can ingest high-throughput data, but using Lambda to write to S3 requires custom code to batch, compress, and handle retries. This adds development and operational overhead. While it can work, it is not the most managed solution and may require tuning to achieve compression and efficient S3 writes.
- ✓
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose with a delivery stream to Amazon S3, enabling compression.
Why this is correct
Kinesis Data Firehose is a fully managed service that can ingest streaming data, automatically compress it using GZIP, and deliver it to S3. It requires no code, scales automatically, and provides high availability. It meets the requirements of continuous ingestion, compression, and minimal management, making it the ideal choice.
- ✗
Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) with a Kafka Connect S3 sink connector.
Why it's wrong here
Amazon MSK provides a managed Kafka cluster, but it still requires provisioning, scaling, and managing brokers. The Kafka Connect S3 sink connector must be configured and maintained. This introduces significant operational overhead compared to a fully managed ingestion service, and it is overkill for simple streaming ingestion to S3.
- ✗
AWS Glue streaming ETL job that reads from Amazon Kinesis Data Streams and writes to Amazon S3.
Why it's wrong here
AWS Glue streaming ETL can process data from Kinesis Data Streams, but it requires managing Glue jobs, which adds operational overhead. It is better suited for complex transformations, not simple ingestion. For basic ingestion with compression, Firehose is simpler and more cost-effective, with less management required.
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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Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Amazon Web Services exam blueprint
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.