DEA-C01 Data Operations and Support Practice Question
A company uses Amazon Kinesis Data Streams to ingest clickstream data from web applications. The data is consumed by a Kinesis Data Analytics application that runs SQL queries. Recently, the data analytics application has been falling behind, and the 'MillisBehindLatest' metric for the consumer has been increasing steadily. The shard count is 4, and the average records per second per shard is 200, with an average record size of 1 KB. The provisioned shard limit for the account is 10. Which action will resolve the issue?
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 to 8.
The consumer is falling behind due to insufficient read capacity. Increasing the number of shards increases the total read capacity and allows the consumer to keep up. Option A is wrong because the write capacity is not the issue; the consumer is behind. Option B is wrong because switching to enhanced fan-out does not address the shard count limitation; it improves dedicated throughput per consumer but the total throughput is still limited by shard count. Option D is wrong because the consumer is already using KCL, and the issue is not related to checkpointing.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Enable enhanced fan-out on the Kinesis stream and subscribe the analytics application to it.
Why it's wrong here
Enhanced fan-out provides dedicated read throughput, but the total throughput is still limited by shard count.
- ✗
Reduce the checkpoint interval on the Kinesis Client Library (KCL) consumer to commit offsets more frequently.
Why it's wrong here
Frequent checkpointing does not increase throughput and may add overhead.
- ✓
Increase the number of shards in the Kinesis stream to 8.
Why this is correct
More shards increase total read capacity, allowing the consumer to process data faster.
- ✗
Increase the provisioned write capacity of the Kinesis stream by requesting a shard limit increase.
Why it's wrong here
The issue is read capacity, not write capacity.
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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.