DEA-C01 Data Store Management Practice Question
A data engineer notices that an Amazon Redshift cluster is running low on disk space. The cluster has three nodes of type dc2.large. Which action will increase the available storage capacity?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse Redshift's local storage model with EBS-backed storage, leading them to think they can change volume types or mount external storage like S3, when in fact Redshift relies solely on the aggregate of each node's local instance store for persistent data.
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 number of nodes in the cluster.
Amazon Redshift stores data on the local instance store volumes attached to each node in the cluster. With a dc2.large cluster, each node provides approximately 160 GB of SSD storage. Adding nodes increases the total available storage linearly because each new node contributes its local storage to the cluster. Therefore, increasing the number of nodes is the correct way to expand disk capacity.
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 number of nodes in the cluster.
Why this is correct
Adding nodes increases total storage capacity.
- ✗
Mount an Amazon S3 bucket as a file system to store data.
Why it's wrong here
S3 cannot be mounted as a file system for Redshift; it can be used for external tables via Redshift Spectrum.
- ✗
Change the volume type to Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1) to increase capacity.
Why it's wrong here
Redshift uses its own storage; changing volume type is not applicable.
- ✗
Enable automatic compression on the tables.
Why it's wrong here
Compression reduces storage usage but does not add capacity.
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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.