MLS-C01 Data Engineering Practice Question
A company uses AWS Glue to run ETL jobs on a daily schedule. The jobs are failing intermittently with 'OutOfMemory' errors. The data volume has grown 5x over the past month. Which is the MOST cost-effective fix?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often assume the issue is data partitioning (Option A) or that a more powerful service like EMR (Option D) is always better, when in fact the simplest and most cost-effective solution is to adjust the Glue job's DPU allocation to match the increased workload.
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 DPUs for the Glue job
The 'OutOfMemory' errors in AWS Glue are caused by insufficient compute resources (DPUs) to process the 5x increased data volume. Increasing the number of DPUs allocates more memory and processing capacity to the job, directly addressing the memory shortage without changing the data or architecture. This is the most cost-effective fix because it scales resources incrementally rather than switching to a more expensive service like EMR.
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 partitions in the source S3 data
Why it's wrong here
Partitioning helps with performance, not memory errors.
- ✓
Increase the number of DPUs for the Glue job
Why this is correct
More DPUs provide more memory and parallelism.
- ✗
Reduce the data volume by sampling
Why it's wrong here
Reducing data may impact accuracy and is not a proper solution.
- ✗
Switch from AWS Glue to Amazon EMR
Why it's wrong here
EMR is more expensive and requires management.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This MLS-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 MLS-C01 exam.