DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A company needs to transfer 10 TB of historical data from an on-premises HDFS cluster to Amazon S3. The data is stored on a single 20 TB disk. The network link to AWS has a bandwidth of 1 Gbps. The transfer must be completed within 2 days. Which solution meets these requirements?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates may calculate the theoretical transfer time (10 TB / 1 Gbps ≈ 22.2 hours) and assume it fits within 2 days, ignoring real-world network inefficiencies, disk I/O limits, and the fact that AWS CLI transfers over a single TCP connection cannot saturate a 1 Gbps link without tuning (e.g., multipart uploads, parallel connections).
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
✓
Use AWS Snowball Edge to transfer the data physically.
AWS Snowball Edge is the correct solution because it can physically transfer 10 TB of data from a single 20 TB disk within the 2-day window, bypassing the network bandwidth limitation. With a 1 Gbps link, the theoretical maximum transfer of 10 TB would take approximately 22.2 hours under ideal conditions, but real-world overhead, latency, and potential congestion make it unreliable to complete within 2 days. Snowball Edge provides a petabyte-scale physical transport solution that avoids 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.
- ✓
Use AWS Snowball Edge to transfer the data physically.
Why this is correct
Snowball Edge provides fast, reliable transfer for large datasets.
- ✗
Use Amazon Kinesis Data Streams to stream data to S3.
Why it's wrong here
Kinesis is for real-time streaming, not bulk historical transfer.
- ✗
Use AWS DMS to migrate data from HDFS to S3.
Why it's wrong here
DMS is for databases, not file systems.
- ✗
Use AWS CLI to copy data directly to S3 over the network.
Why it's wrong here
1 Gbps for 2 days can transfer ~21.6 TB, but network may be unreliable and not guarantee completion.
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.