DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A data engineer is using AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) to migrate a 4 TB on-premises Oracle database to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL. The migration must complete in a single maintenance window, and the source database cannot be taken offline for more than 30 minutes. The engineer configures a full load plus change data capture (CDC) task. During testing, the full load phase takes 14 hours. Which configuration change will most effectively reduce the time required for the full load phase?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is assuming that scaling the target database or enabling high availability will speed up a DMS full load, when the real bottleneck is the serial table-by-table loading that parallel load addresses.
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
✓
Enable parallel load by increasing the number of tables loaded concurrently in the task settings.
Parallel full load is the primary DMS tuning lever for reducing bulk migration time. By loading multiple tables concurrently, DMS saturates available network and I/O resources rather than processing tables serially. Switching to CDC only would skip existing data entirely, and scaling the target or enabling Multi-AZ does not address the serial loading bottleneck that dominates a large full load.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Enable parallel load by increasing the number of tables loaded concurrently in the task settings.
Why this is correct
AWS DMS supports parallel full load, which loads multiple tables simultaneously instead of serially. For a 4 TB Oracle database with many tables, increasing the number of tables loaded concurrently in the task settings significantly reduces overall full load time by using multiple threads and network connections. This is the most effective and supported tuning mechanism for reducing full load duration without changing the source or target.
- ✗
Increase the Aurora PostgreSQL instance class to the largest available memory-optimized instance.
Why it's wrong here
The bottleneck in a DMS full load is typically the source read throughput and the number of parallel threads, not the target write capacity. While a larger Aurora instance may help marginally with write throughput, it does not address the serial table-by-table loading that dominates the 14-hour runtime. Scaling the target alone is unlikely to produce the dramatic reduction needed.
- ✗
Enable Multi-AZ on the Aurora PostgreSQL cluster before starting the migration task.
Why it's wrong here
Multi-AZ provides high availability by maintaining a standby replica, but it does not increase write throughput for the primary instance. Enabling Multi-AZ actually adds synchronous replication overhead to the standby, which can slow writes during a bulk load. It has no effect on the DMS full load parallelism or source read speed, so it will not reduce the 14-hour duration.
- ✗
Change the migration method from full load plus CDC to CDC only.
Why it's wrong here
CDC only replicates ongoing changes from the point the task starts; it does not copy existing rows. If you switch to CDC only, the 4 TB of existing data is never migrated, so the target Aurora PostgreSQL database would contain only newly changed rows. This fails the requirement to migrate the entire database and would leave the target incomplete and unusable for the cutover.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
This DEA-C01 question is part of Courseiva's 1,321-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Amazon Web Services exam blueprint
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.