DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A data engineer is designing a data pipeline that ingests CSV files from an FTP server to Amazon S3. The files arrive hourly and each file is about 500 MB. The engineer wants to minimize operational overhead and cost. Which approach is best?
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 AWS Transfer for SFTP and point the endpoint to an S3 bucket
AWS Transfer for SFTP provides a fully managed FTP service that writes directly to S3, eliminating the need to manage servers. Lambda with boto3 is code-heavy; EC2 requires management; Snowball is for large offline transfers.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Write a Python script in AWS Lambda using boto3 to download from FTP and upload to S3
Why it's wrong here
Lambda has a 15-minute timeout and 512 MB /tmp storage, insufficient for 500 MB files.
- ✗
Use AWS Snowball Edge to transfer files weekly
Why it's wrong here
Designed for large offline data transfer, not hourly files.
- ✓
Use AWS Transfer for SFTP and point the endpoint to an S3 bucket
Why this is correct
Fully managed, no servers to manage, direct to S3.
- ✗
Deploy an Amazon EC2 instance with a cron job to run wget and aws s3 cp
Why it's wrong here
Requires managing EC2; higher operational overhead.
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.