DEA-C01 Data Operations and Support Practice Question
This DEA-C01 practice question tests your understanding of data operations and support. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
An AWS Glue job that processes streaming data from Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is failing intermittently with 'Failed to checkpoint' errors. The job uses checkpointing to an Amazon S3 bucket every 60 seconds. Which action should the engineer take to resolve the issue?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Increase the checkpoint interval to 120 seconds.
The 'Failed to checkpoint' error in AWS Glue streaming jobs typically occurs when the checkpoint operation exceeds the 60-second interval due to high throughput or large state size. Increasing the checkpoint interval to 120 seconds provides more time for the checkpoint to complete, reducing the likelihood of timeouts and allowing the job to stabilize without losing progress.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
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 checkpoint interval to 120 seconds.
Why this is correct
Reduces the frequency of checkpoint writes, mitigating contention.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Move the checkpoint location to an Amazon DynamoDB table.
Why it's wrong here
Glue streaming does not support DynamoDB for checkpoints.
✗
Decrease the Kinesis shard count to reduce throughput.
Why it's wrong here
Reducing shards could increase latency but not resolve checkpoint errors.
✗
Disable checkpointing and rely on Kinesis iterator age.
Why it's wrong here
Disabling checkpointing would cause data loss on failure.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates may assume DynamoDB is always faster for checkpoints (Option B), but AWS Glue streaming jobs natively support only S3 for checkpointing, and DynamoDB is not a valid checkpoint location—this distracts from the simple fix of adjusting the interval.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
AWS Glue streaming jobs use Apache Spark's structured streaming checkpointing mechanism, which writes metadata and state data to S3. The checkpoint interval defines how often the job commits offsets and state; if the commit takes longer than the interval, subsequent checkpoints queue up and eventually fail. Increasing the interval gives the S3 write operations (which are eventually consistent) more time to complete, especially under high throughput or when dealing with large state stores like mapGroupsWithState.
KKey Concepts to Remember
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
→Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
→Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
A media company stores terabytes of video archives that are accessed once a year for audit purposes. Moving these objects to a cold storage tier (Azure Archive, S3 Glacier, or Google Nearline) costs a fraction of hot storage. Questions like this test whether you understand storage tiers, access frequency tradeoffs, and retrieval latency requirements.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Data Operations and Support — This question tests Data Operations and Support — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Increase the checkpoint interval to 120 seconds. — The 'Failed to checkpoint' error in AWS Glue streaming jobs typically occurs when the checkpoint operation exceeds the 60-second interval due to high throughput or large state size. Increasing the checkpoint interval to 120 seconds provides more time for the checkpoint to complete, reducing the likelihood of timeouts and allowing the job to stabilize without losing progress.
What should I do if I get this DEA-C01 question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Question Discussion
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