DEA-C01 Data Operations and Support Practice Question
An AWS Glue job that performs data transformation on large Parquet files in Amazon S3 is taking a long time to complete. The job uses the default number of DPUs. Which change would most likely improve the job's performance?
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 'Max capacity' (number of DPUs) for the job.
Increasing the number of DPUs (Option A) adds more parallelism and memory, which directly improves the performance of the Glue job when processing large Parquet files. Option B (coalesce) reduces the number of output files but does not speed up the transformation itself. Option C (reduce partitions) may lead to data skew or out-of-memory errors. Option D (change to CSV) would make processing slower because CSV is less efficient than Parquet.
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 'Max capacity' (number of DPUs) for the job.
Why this is correct
More DPUs provide more compute resources.
- ✗
Use 'coalesce' to reduce the number of output files.
Why it's wrong here
Coalesce reduces partitions, which can slow processing.
- ✗
Reduce the number of partitions in the source data.
Why it's wrong here
Fewer partitions may cause memory issues.
- ✗
Change the input format from Parquet to CSV.
Why it's wrong here
CSV is less efficient than Parquet.
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 |
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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.