DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A data engineer is troubleshooting a Kinesis Data Firehose delivery stream that sends data to an Amazon S3 bucket. The delivery stream has a buffer size of 5 MB and a buffer interval of 60 seconds. The data ingestion rate is 2 MB per second. The engineer notices that S3 objects are created every 60 seconds but each object is only about 2 MB. What should the engineer do to reduce the number of small S3 objects?
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 buffer size to 10 MB.
Increasing the buffer size to 10 MB will allow the stream to buffer more data before writing to S3, resulting in larger objects. Option B is wrong because decreasing the buffer interval would create objects more frequently, making the problem worse. Option C is wrong because reducing the buffer size would create even smaller objects. Option D is wrong because switching to Kinesis Data Streams does not solve the buffering issue.
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 buffer size to 10 MB.
Why this is correct
Increasing the buffer size to 10 MB will allow the stream to buffer more data before writing to S3, resulting in larger objects.
- ✗
Decrease the buffer interval to 30 seconds.
Why it's wrong here
Decreasing the buffer interval would create objects more frequently, making the problem worse.
- ✗
Reduce the buffer size to 2 MB.
Why it's wrong here
Reducing the buffer size would create even smaller objects, exacerbating the issue.
- ✗
Switch to Kinesis Data Streams and use a Lambda function to write to S3.
Why it's wrong here
Switching to Kinesis Data Streams does not solve the buffering issue and adds unnecessary complexity.
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.