DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A data engineer is building a streaming pipeline using Amazon Kinesis Data Streams and AWS Lambda. The Lambda function processes records and writes to Amazon DynamoDB. The engineer notices that the Lambda function is throttled during high traffic. Which action should the engineer take to reduce throttling?
⚠ Common exam trap
The DEA-C01 exam often tests the misconception that throttling is caused by Lambda function performance (timeout or retries) rather than the stream's shard count, leading candidates to choose options that affect execution duration or error handling instead of scaling the source.
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 data stream
Increasing the number of shards in the Kinesis data stream increases the overall throughput of the stream, which allows the Lambda event source mapping to poll more shards concurrently. Each shard is processed by one Lambda invocation at a time, so more shards mean more concurrent Lambda executions, reducing the per-invocation load and the likelihood of throttling.
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 Lambda function timeout
Why it's wrong here
Timeout does not affect concurrency throttle.
- ✗
Disable retries on the Lambda function
Why it's wrong here
Disabling retries may lose data.
- ✓
Increase the number of shards in the Kinesis data stream
Why this is correct
More shards allow more Lambda concurrent executions, reducing throttling.
- ✗
Use an Amazon SQS queue as an intermediate buffer
Why it's wrong here
This adds complexity and latency.
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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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.