DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A data engineer needs to transfer 50 TB of historical data from an on-premises Hadoop cluster to Amazon S3. The company has a slow internet connection (100 Mbps). The data must be transferred within 2 weeks. Which service should the engineer recommend?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to choose AWS DataSync (Option A) because it is a common migration tool, but they fail to calculate the transfer time over a slow link, overlooking the physical appliance option when bandwidth is severely constrained.
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 Edge
B is correct because transferring 50 TB over a 100 Mbps connection would take approximately 48 days (50 TB * 1024 GB/TB * 8 bits/byte / (100 Mbps * 86400 seconds/day)), far exceeding the 2-week deadline. AWS Snowball Edge is a physical appliance that can be loaded with data on-premises and shipped to AWS, bypassing the slow network entirely and completing the transfer within days.
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 uses network; 100 Mbps is too slow for 50 TB in 2 weeks.
- ✓
AWS Snowball Edge
Why this is correct
Snowball Edge physically transfers data, bypassing network limitations.
- ✗
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose
Why it's wrong here
Firehose is for streaming, not batch transfer of historical data.
- ✗
AWS Glue ETL job with JDBC connection to Hadoop
Why it's wrong here
Glue is for ETL, not bulk data transfer; network bottleneck remains.
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
Related to this question
About these practice questions
This DEA-C01 question is part of Courseiva's 1,711-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 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.