The correct answer is to enable job retries with exponential backoff and configure the Glue job to run in multiple Availability Zones. These two strategies directly address AWS Glue high availability and fault tolerance by ensuring transient failures are automatically retried with increasing delays, while multi-AZ deployment protects against an entire Availability Zone outage. On the AWS Certified Data Engineer Associate DEA-C01 exam, this concept tests your understanding of resilient pipeline design—a common trap is assuming that simply enabling retries without backoff is sufficient, or that single-AZ configurations can provide true fault tolerance. Remember that retries handle temporary hiccups, while multi-AZ handles infrastructure-level failures; together they form the backbone of a fault-tolerant Glue job. A helpful memory tip is “Retry the spike, spread across the zone”—retries manage spikes in failure, and multi-AZ spreads the workload across zones for continuous availability.
DEA-C01 Data Operations and Support Practice Question
This DEA-C01 practice question tests your understanding of data operations and support. Match the stated requirement to the specific cloud service, access model, or configuration option — many options are valid in isolation but not for this scenario. 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.
A company is running a critical data pipeline using AWS Glue. The pipeline must be highly available and fault-tolerant. Which TWO strategies should the data engineer implement? (Choose TWO.)
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Configure the Glue job to run in multiple Availability Zones.
Configuring the Glue job to run in multiple Availability Zones ensures that if one AZ experiences a failure, the job can continue processing in another AZ, providing high availability and fault tolerance. This is a fundamental strategy for resilient data pipeline design in AWS.
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.
✓
Configure the Glue job to run in multiple Availability Zones.
Why this is correct
Multi-AZ provides redundancy.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Use a single instance type for all Glue workers.
Why it's wrong here
Does not improve fault tolerance.
✗
Increase the number of concurrent runs for the Glue job.
Why it's wrong here
Concurrency does not guarantee fault tolerance.
✓
Enable job retries with exponential backoff.
Why this is correct
Retries handle transient failures.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Disable job bookmarks to avoid reprocessing.
Why it's wrong here
Bookmarks help with incremental processing, not fault tolerance.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse increasing concurrency (Option C) with fault tolerance, but concurrency only scales processing horizontally without providing redundancy against infrastructure failures.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
AWS Glue jobs run on a managed Spark cluster where worker nodes are distributed across Availability Zones. By specifying multiple AZs (e.g., using subnet settings in the Glue connection or VPC configuration), the job can survive an AZ outage. Under the hood, Glue uses AWS CloudWatch for monitoring and can automatically retry failed job runs, but explicit retry with exponential backoff (Option D) is a best practice to handle transient failures gracefully, reducing load on downstream systems and improving overall pipeline resilience.
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
An e-commerce site experiences heavy traffic on Black Friday and near-zero traffic during off-peak weeks. Rather than provisioning permanent large VMs, the team uses auto-scaling groups that add capacity automatically under load and reduce it overnight. Questions like this test whether you understand elasticity, availability zones, and cloud compute scaling patterns.
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: Configure the Glue job to run in multiple Availability Zones. — Configuring the Glue job to run in multiple Availability Zones ensures that if one AZ experiences a failure, the job can continue processing in another AZ, providing high availability and fault tolerance. This is a fundamental strategy for resilient data pipeline design in AWS.
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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