DEA-C01 Data Ingestion and Transformation Practice Question
A startup is ingesting event data from a mobile app into an Amazon Kinesis Data Streams stream with 2 shards. Each shard can ingest up to 1 MB/s or 1000 records/s. The app sends about 800 records per second with an average record size of 1.5 KB. The data engineer notices that the stream is throttling some records, resulting in data loss. The engineer needs to ensure that all records are ingested without changing the application code. What should the data engineer do?
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 shards in the Kinesis stream to 3.
The current throughput is 800 records/s * 1.5 KB = 1.2 MB/s, which exceeds the per-shard limit of 1 MB/s. Adding a third shard increases the total write capacity to 3 MB/s, accommodating the current traffic. Option A is incorrect because reducing record size would require modifying the application code. Option B is incorrect because Kinesis Data Firehose is not designed for real-time ingestion and does not address the shard capacity issue. Option D is incorrect because enhanced fan-out improves consumer read throughput, not producer write throughput.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Reduce the average record size to below 1 KB by compressing data on the client side.
Why it's wrong here
This requires application code change.
- ✗
Switch from Kinesis Data Streams to Kinesis Data Firehose for ingestion.
Why it's wrong here
Firehose has similar throttling limits and requires architecture change.
- ✓
Increase the number of shards in the Kinesis stream to 3.
Why this is correct
Adding shards increases total ingestion capacity.
- ✗
Enable enhanced fan-out on the stream to provide dedicated throughput to each consumer.
Why it's wrong here
Enhanced fan-out benefits consumers, not producers.
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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.