DEA-C01 Data Operations and Support Practice Question
An Amazon Kinesis Data Streams application is lagging behind. The data records are small (1 KB) and the shard count is 10. The consumer uses the KCL with default configuration. Which action will MOST effectively reduce the consumer lag?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often assume that adding more shards (Option C) will always reduce lag, but the bottleneck is the consumer's processing capacity. Enhanced Fan-Out (Option B) is specifically designed to reduce consumer lag by providing dedicated throughput per consumer.
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
✓
Use Enhanced Fan-Out to provide dedicated throughput.
Enhanced Fan-Out provides each consumer with dedicated throughput (2 MB/s per shard) and eliminates the need for polling, which reduces latency and lag. Given that the consumer is lagging with default configuration and small records, Enhanced Fan-Out directly addresses the consumer-side bottleneck by providing dedicated read throughput, making it the most effective option. Option A is incorrect because the KCL does not support multiple workers per shard; each shard is processed by a single worker in a single-threaded manner. Option C may help if the shard is saturated with incoming data, but the problem is consumer lag, not data ingestion. Option D reduces data size but does not address the consumer processing speed.
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 KCL workers per shard (e.g., 2 workers per shard).
Why it's wrong here
The KCL does not support multiple workers per shard; each shard is processed by a single worker sequentially. Therefore, increasing workers per shard is not a valid configuration.
- ✓
Use Enhanced Fan-Out to provide dedicated throughput.
Why this is correct
Enhanced Fan-Out provides each consumer with dedicated throughput (2 MB/s per shard) and push-based delivery, which reduces latency and lag directly. This is the most effective action to reduce consumer lag given the scenario.
- ✗
Increase the number of shards to 20.
Why it's wrong here
Increasing the number of shards can help if the shard is saturated with incoming data, but the problem is consumer lag (processing speed), not ingestion throughput. Enhanced Fan-Out is more targeted.
- ✗
Reduce the record size by compressing the data.
Why it's wrong here
Compressing records reduces data size, which can improve throughput, but does not address the consumer's processing latency. The records are small (1 KB) already, so compression offers minimal benefit.
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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.