← DEA-C01·Amazon Web Services

Question 318 of 1,786

Data Ingestion and Transformation →hardMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped

How to Improve Kinesis Consumer Processing Speed by Adding Shards

This DEA-C01 practice question tests your understanding of data ingestion and transformation. Read the scenario carefully and evaluate each option against the stated constraints before committing to an answer. 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 using Amazon Kinesis Data Streams to ingest real-time clickstream data. The data is consumed by a fleet of EC2 instances running a custom application that processes the records and writes to DynamoDB. The application is experiencing high latency and records are being processed slower than they are produced. The stream has 5 shards. Which action would MOST effectively improve processing speed?

A
Use the Kinesis Client Library (KCL) to automatically distribute shards among instances.
Why wrong: KCL already distributes shards, but the number of shards is the limiting factor.
B
Increase the EC2 instance size to provide more CPU and memory.
Why wrong: If the bottleneck is the stream's shard limit, increasing instance size will not help.
C
Add more EC2 instances consuming from the same stream without changing shard count.
Why wrong: Each shard can be consumed by only one consumer per application; extra instances will be idle.
D
Increase the number of shards in the Kinesis stream.
More shards increase the stream's capacity and allow more parallel consumers.

Full breakdown with real-world context →

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.

The bottleneck is the number of shards in the Kinesis stream. Each shard provides a fixed read capacity of 2 MB/s and 5 read transactions per second. With only 5 shards, the total read throughput is limited regardless of how many EC2 instances consume the data. Increasing the number of shards increases the total read capacity, allowing more records to be consumed in parallel and reducing processing latency.

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.

✗
Use the Kinesis Client Library (KCL) to automatically distribute shards among instances.
Why it's wrong here
KCL already distributes shards, but the number of shards is the limiting factor.
✗
Increase the EC2 instance size to provide more CPU and memory.
Why it's wrong here
If the bottleneck is the stream's shard limit, increasing instance size will not help.
✗
Add more EC2 instances consuming from the same stream without changing shard count.
Why it's wrong here
Each shard can be consumed by only one consumer per application; extra instances will be idle.
✓
Increase the number of shards in the Kinesis stream.
Why this is correct
More shards increase the stream's capacity and allow more parallel consumers.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.

Common exam traps

Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword

The trap here is that candidates often think adding more consumers (EC2 instances) will automatically speed up processing, but they fail to recognize that each shard's read throughput is fixed, so without increasing shards, additional consumers cannot consume more data in parallel.

Detailed technical explanation

How to think about this question

Kinesis Data Streams shards enforce a hard limit of 1,000 records per second or 1 MB/s write per shard, and 2 MB/s read per shard. When a consumer application falls behind, the shard's read limit becomes the bottleneck. Increasing shards is the only way to scale read throughput horizontally. Under the hood, KCL uses DynamoDB for lease coordination, and each shard is assigned to exactly one worker in a consumer group; adding shards allows more workers to process data concurrently.

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 cloud solutions architect for a retail company is evaluating services for a new workload. The correct answer here reflects best practice for the specific scenario described — not a general cloud recommendation. Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option. Cloud exam questions reward reading the constraint carefully: the same technology can be right or wrong depending on the use case.

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.

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FAQ

Questions learners often ask

What does this DEA-C01 question test?

Data Ingestion and Transformation — This question tests Data Ingestion and Transformation — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..

What is the correct answer to this question?

The correct answer is: Increase the number of shards in the Kinesis stream. — The bottleneck is the number of shards in the Kinesis stream. Each shard provides a fixed read capacity of 2 MB/s and 5 read transactions per second. With only 5 shards, the total read throughput is limited regardless of how many EC2 instances consume the data. Increasing the number of shards increases the total read capacity, allowing more records to be consumed in parallel and reducing processing latency.

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.

About these practice questions

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Same concept, more angles

1 more ways this is tested on DEA-C01

These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.

Variation 1. A company is using Amazon Kinesis Data Streams with a Lambda consumer to process clickstream data. The data rate is high and the Lambda function is falling behind, resulting in increased processing latency. What is the MOST effective way to improve throughput?

medium

A.Increase the memory allocated to the Lambda function.
B.Increase the Lambda function timeout.
C.Use Kinesis Data Firehose instead of Lambda.
✓ D.Increase the number of shards in the Kinesis stream.

Why D: Increasing the number of shards in the Kinesis stream increases the stream's total read capacity, allowing more concurrent Lambda invocations to process records in parallel. Since each shard supports up to 5 read transactions per second and a maximum of 2 MB/s read throughput, adding shards directly raises the aggregate throughput, enabling the Lambda consumer to keep up with the high data rate.

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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.