DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A company wants to ingest real-time clickstream data from a website into Amazon S3 with a maximum latency of 60 seconds. The data volume peaks at 500 MB/s. Which service should they use to buffer and deliver the data to S3?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse Kinesis Data Streams (a real-time processing stream requiring custom consumers) with Kinesis Data Firehose (a fully managed delivery service), leading them to pick Data Streams for its real-time capabilities, even though Firehose is the correct choice for direct S3 delivery with minimal latency.
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
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose is the correct choice because it is designed to ingest streaming data, buffer it, and deliver it to destinations like Amazon S3 with configurable buffer intervals (e.g., 60 seconds) and buffer sizes (e.g., up to 128 MB). It can handle the peak throughput of 500 MB/s by automatically scaling, and it meets the maximum latency requirement of 60 seconds by flushing data to S3 based on time or size thresholds.
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 Firehose
Why this is correct
Firehose is designed for streaming ingestion into S3 with configurable buffering.
- ✗
Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)
Why it's wrong here
SQS is a message queue, not optimized for high-throughput streaming to S3.
- ✗
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams
Why it's wrong here
Kinesis Data Streams is a storage layer; you would need to build a consumer to write to S3.
- ✗
AWS Lambda
Why it's wrong here
Lambda is not a buffer; it processes events but cannot buffer large streams.
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
Related to this question
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Same concept, more angles
3 more ways this is tested on DEA-C01
These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.
Variation 1. A company needs to ingest real-time clickstream data from a web application into Amazon S3 for analytics. The data must be available within minutes of generation. Which AWS service should be used to capture and deliver this streaming data?
easy- A.Amazon RDS
- ✓ B.Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose
- C.AWS Glue
- D.Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)
Why B: Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose is the correct choice because it is a fully managed service designed to capture, transform, and load streaming data into Amazon S3, Redshift, Elasticsearch, or Splunk in near real-time (typically within 60 seconds). It directly addresses the requirement for ingesting real-time clickstream data and delivering it to S3 within minutes, without requiring custom code or manual scaling.
Variation 2. A company wants to ingest real-time clickstream data from a website into Amazon S3 with minimal code. The data should be delivered within 60 seconds of generation. Which AWS service should be used?
easy- ✓ A.Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose
- B.AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)
- C.Amazon Kinesis Data Streams
- D.Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration
Why A: (Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose) is correct because it is a fully managed service that can ingest real-time clickstream data and deliver it to Amazon S3 in near-real-time (typically less than 60 seconds). Option B (AWS DMS) is for database migration, not streaming ingestion. Option C (Amazon Kinesis Data Streams) requires custom consumers to process and deliver data to S3, adding code overhead. Option D (S3 Transfer Acceleration) only speeds up uploads but does not provide streaming ingestion capabilities.
Variation 3. A data engineer needs to ingest real-time clickstream data from a website into Amazon S3 for analytics. The data arrives as JSON records, each under 1 KB. The engineer wants to use a serverless solution with automatic scaling and minimal operational overhead. Which AWS service should be used as the ingestion endpoint?
easy- A.Amazon S3 with presigned URLs
- B.Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics
- ✓ C.Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose
- D.AWS Lambda function behind an API Gateway
Why C: Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose is the correct choice because it is a fully managed, serverless service designed to ingest streaming data and automatically load it into Amazon S3 with no ongoing administration. It handles automatic scaling, converts incoming JSON records to formats like Parquet or ORC if needed, and can batch data into S3 based on time or size intervals, making it ideal for real-time clickstream ingestion with minimal operational overhead.
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.