DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A company uses AWS Lambda to process records from an Amazon Kinesis Data Stream. Each record is about 50 KB. The Lambda function transforms the data and writes to Amazon DynamoDB. Recently, the Lambda function has been experiencing throttling and high error rates. The Kinesis stream has 10 shards. What is the most cost-effective solution to improve processing throughput?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently assume increasing shards or parallelization is the only way to improve throughput, but the question specifically asks for the most cost-effective solution, and increasing the batch window reduces invocation count without incurring additional costs.
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 Batch Window (MaximumBatchingWindowInSeconds) for the event source mapping.
Increasing the Batch Window (MaximumBatchingWindowInSeconds) allows the Lambda function to accumulate more records from the Kinesis stream before invoking the function, reducing the number of invocations and thus lowering the chance of throttling. This is the most cost-effective solution as it does not require additional shards, memory, or parallelization, and directly addresses the high error rates caused by excessive concurrent executions.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Increase the number of shards in the Kinesis stream.
Why it's wrong here
Increases cost and may not be necessary.
- ✗
Increase the Parallelization Factor for the Lambda event source mapping.
Why it's wrong here
May increase concurrency but not cost-effective.
- ✗
Increase the memory allocated to the Lambda function.
Why it's wrong here
Does not reduce invocation rate.
- ✓
Increase the Batch Window (MaximumBatchingWindowInSeconds) for the event source mapping.
Why this is correct
Reduces invocation frequency.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
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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.