hardMultiple Choice
MLA-C01 Practice Question: A data engineer is ingesting streaming…
A data engineer is ingesting streaming clickstream data from a website into Amazon S3 for ML training. The data arrives at a rate of 10,000 events per second, and the team needs near-real-time availability with minimal transformation. Which AWS service should the engineer use to ingest the data into S3 with the LEAST operational overhead?
⚠ Common exam trap
MLA-C01 often tests the distinction between Kinesis Data Streams (requires custom consumer) and Kinesis Data Firehose (fully managed delivery to S3), so candidates must recognize that 'least operational overhead' points to Firehose.
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 with S3 as the destination
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose is a fully managed service that ingests streaming data and delivers it directly to destinations like Amazon S3 with built-in buffering, compression, and optional transformation. It requires no consumer application to write or manage, so operational overhead is minimal. It easily handles 10,000 events per second and provides near-real-time delivery to S3.
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 Streams with a custom consumer application writing to S3
Why it's wrong here
A custom consumer application means the team provisions, scales and operates the compute that reads from Kinesis and writes to S3, adding operational overhead. Kinesis Data Streams suits custom processing logic; managed delivery to S3 is handled by Kinesis Data Firehose.
- ✓
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose with S3 as the destination
Why this is correct
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose buffers and delivers streaming records directly into Amazon S3 without managing consumers, shards or custom code, satisfying the 10,000 events per second throughput and near-real-time requirement. Its fully managed, serverless delivery model removes the operational overhead of provisioning and scaling infrastructure that other ingestion services demand.
- ✗
AWS Glue ETL job running on a schedule to pull data from a message queue
Why it's wrong here
A scheduled Glue job polls a message queue in batches, so data is not near-real-time and the queue must be provisioned and managed. Glue fits scheduled batch ETL between data stores, not continuous high-throughput ingestion into S3.
- ✗
AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) with S3 as target
Why it's wrong here
DMS replicates existing database rows, not high-velocity event streams; it cannot sustain 10,000 events per second into S3. It is tempting because DMS does load data into S3, but that suits one-off or ongoing database migrations, not clickstream ingestion.
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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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Amazon Web Services exam blueprint
This MLA-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 MLA-C01 exam.