DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A data engineer needs to transfer 50 TB of historical data from an on-premises HDFS cluster to Amazon S3. The network bandwidth is limited to 100 Mbps. The transfer must be completed within one week. Which service should be used?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates may underestimate the time required for online transfer and choose AWS DataSync, failing to calculate that 50 TB at 100 Mbps takes over 46 days, not one week, and overlooking Snowball's physical shipping approach for offline data transfer.
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 Snowball
AWS Snowball is the correct choice because transferring 50 TB over a 100 Mbps network would take approximately 46 days (50 TB * 8 bits/byte / 100 Mbps / 86400 seconds/day), far exceeding the one-week deadline. Snowball provides a physical storage device that can be shipped to the on-premises location, allowing data to be loaded locally and shipped to AWS, bypassing network bandwidth constraints entirely.
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 DataSync
Why it's wrong here
DataSync transfers over the internet or Direct Connect, so 50 TB at 100 Mbps would take roughly 46 days, far exceeding one week. It is tempting because it moves on-premises file data to S3, and would be correct for smaller datasets or when bandwidth is sufficient.
- ✓
AWS Snowball
Why this is correct
At 100 Mbps, transferring 50 TB over the network takes roughly 46 days, far exceeding the one-week deadline. AWS Snowball ships data physically on a rugged appliance, bypassing the bandwidth constraint and completing the migration within the required timeframe.
- ✗
Amazon CloudFront
Why it's wrong here
CloudFront is a content delivery network that caches and serves objects to end users; it does not ingest bulk data from on-premises storage. It is tempting because it sits in front of S3, and would be correct for accelerating global delivery of already-stored content.
- ✗
AWS Database Migration Service (DMS)
Why it's wrong here
DMS replicates databases and schemas between engines, not HDFS files into S3, and offers no bandwidth-accelerated bulk transfer. It is tempting because it migrates on-premises data to AWS, and would be correct for moving an Oracle or SQL Server database to Amazon RDS.
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.