DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A company uses Amazon Kinesis Data Streams to ingest clickstream data from a website. The data is then consumed by a custom application for real-time analytics. Recently, the application has been experiencing high latency. The operations team suspects the shard count is insufficient. How should the team increase the shard count of the existing stream?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates might think manually splitting shards (Option C) is the only way to increase shard count, but the UpdateShardCount API is the designed, automated method that avoids the complexity and risk of manual splits.
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 the UpdateShardCount API to increase the shard count for the stream.
The UpdateShardCount API is the correct method to increase the shard count of an existing Kinesis Data Stream without data loss or downtime. It allows you to specify a target shard count, and Kinesis automatically splits shards to achieve that count, redistributing the hash key range across the new shards. This directly addresses the high latency caused by insufficient shard count by increasing the stream's throughput capacity.
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 the UpdateShardCount API to increase the shard count for the stream.
Why this is correct
UpdateShardCount correctly increases shards.
- ✗
Delete the existing stream and create a new one with a higher shard count.
Why it's wrong here
Causes data loss; not recommended.
- ✗
Manually split a shard using the SplitShard API on each existing shard.
Why it's wrong here
SplitShard is not available; use UpdateShardCount.
- ✗
Modify the PutRecord calls to include a new shard key that distributes data across more shards.
Why it's wrong here
Shard count is not controlled by record keys.
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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.