Question 1,598 of 1,672
MLS-C01 Data Engineering Practice Question
A data engineer needs to continuously ingest streaming data from thousands of IoT devices and store the raw data in Amazon S3 for archival processing. The data volume varies significantly throughout the day, and the solution must be serverless, scalable, and cost-effective. Which AWS service should be used to capture and buffer the streaming data before writing to S3?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers confuse Kinesis Data Streams (a real-time processing layer requiring custom consumers) with Kinesis Data Firehose (a managed delivery service), and overlook that Firehose's built-in buffering and direct S3 integration make it the serverless, cost-effective choice for archival ingestion.
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
✓
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose is the correct choice because it is a fully managed, serverless service designed to reliably capture, buffer, and automatically load streaming data into Amazon S3 without requiring any custom code or infrastructure management. It handles variable data volumes by scaling automatically and provides built-in buffering (up to 128 MB or 900 seconds) before writing to S3, making it cost-effective for archival storage.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose
Why this is correct
Kinesis Data Firehose is a serverless service that can directly deliver streaming data to S3 with buffering.
- ✗
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams
Why it's wrong here
Kinesis Data Streams is a real-time streaming service but requires a custom consumer to write to S3; not a direct buffer for S3.
- ✗
AWS Glue
Why it's wrong here
AWS Glue is a batch ETL service, not suitable for real-time streaming ingestion.
- ✗
Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)
Why it's wrong here
SQS is a message queue service, not designed for high-throughput streaming data ingestion into S3.
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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Last reviewed: Jul 4, 2026
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.
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