DEA-C01 Data Store Management Practice Question
A financial services company stores transactional records in Amazon DynamoDB. Auditors require that any item be recoverable to its exact state from any point within the last 30 days, including after an accidental delete or overwrite caused by a faulty deployment. The table uses on-demand capacity and must remain highly available during recovery. Which feature should the data engineer enable?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers confuse periodic on-demand backups or multi-Region replication with continuous point-in-time recovery, when only PITR can restore to an arbitrary second after an accidental delete.
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
✓
DynamoDB point-in-time recovery (PITR)
DynamoDB point-in-time recovery maintains a continuous backup with per-second granularity and supports restore to any moment within the preceding 35 days, which exceeds the 30-day audit window. Because it captures every write and delete, a faulty deployment that corrupts or removes items can be undone by restoring to a timestamp just before the incident. The restore produces a new table, so the production table stays available throughout.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
DynamoDB global tables with multi-Region replication
Why it's wrong here
Global tables replicate writes across Regions for low-latency access and disaster recovery, but replication is near real time and propagates deletes and overwrites. A faulty deployment that deletes an item would replicate that deletion to every replica, so no replica holds the prior state. Global tables improve availability and locality, not historical recovery, so they cannot satisfy point-in-time audit restoration.
- ✗
DynamoDB on-demand backups
Why it's wrong here
On-demand backups capture a full snapshot of the table at the moment the backup is created and retain it until deleted. They do not provide continuous per-second recovery or protect against writes that occur after the last snapshot. Restoring creates a new table, so the required point-in-time recovery to any second within 30 days, including recovery from a delete that happened minutes ago, is not satisfied.
- ✗
DynamoDB Streams with an AWS Lambda consumer writing to Amazon S3
Why it's wrong here
Streams capture item-level changes for up to 24 hours and can feed a Lambda function that archives changes to S3. This can support custom recovery logic, but it is a self-managed solution with 24-hour stream retention, added latency, and reconstruction complexity. It does not natively restore a table to an arbitrary second within 30 days, so it falls short of the stated requirement and adds operational risk.
- ✓
DynamoDB point-in-time recovery (PITR)
Why this is correct
PITR continuously backs up the table with per-second granularity and lets you restore to any point in the preceding 35 days, which covers the 30-day audit requirement. It protects against accidental writes and deletes because the restore uses the continuous backup stream, not a periodic snapshot. Restores create a new table with the chosen timestamp, preserving availability of the source table.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
One of 1,321 original DEA-C01 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. 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.