DEA-C01 AWS IoT Core Practice Question
A data engineer is designing a data ingestion pipeline for IoT sensor data. The sensors send JSON messages every second, and the data must be stored in Amazon S3 in near real-time (within 5 minutes). The engineer also needs to transform the data by adding a timestamp and filtering out malformed records. Which THREE services should be used together?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often mistakenly think that Kinesis Data Firehose can be consumed directly by Glue Streaming ETL, but Glue actually reads from a Kinesis Data Streams. The correct pipeline uses IoT Core to route to a Data Stream, Glue to transform, and Firehose to deliver to S3.
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
✓
AWS Glue
AWS IoT Core (D) securely ingests sensor data via MQTT and routes it to a Kinesis data stream using a rule. AWS Glue Streaming ETL (A) consumes from the stream, adds a timestamp, filters malformed records, and writes the cleaned data to Kinesis Data Firehose (E). Firehose buffers and delivers the data to Amazon S3 within minutes, meeting the near-real-time requirement.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
AWS Glue
Why this is correct
AWS Glue can be used for streaming ETL transformations, such as adding timestamps and filtering malformed records, making it a valid component of the pipeline.
- ✗
Amazon Athena
Why it's wrong here
Amazon Athena is an interactive query service for analyzing data in S3, not for ingestion or transformation in a streaming pipeline.
- ✗
Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)
Why it's wrong here
Amazon SQS is a message queuing service; while it can decouple components, it is not needed here as IoT Core can directly forward to Firehose.
- ✓
AWS IoT Core
Why this is correct
AWS IoT Core is essential for securely ingesting IoT sensor data via MQTT/HTTPS and can route messages to Firehose via rules.
- ✓
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose
Why this is correct
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose ingests streaming data from IoT Core, can buffer and optionally transform data, and delivers it to S3 within the required latency.
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
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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.