- A
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose for ingestion and delivery to Amazon S3, then use AWS Glue for ETL into Amazon Redshift.
Why wrong: Firehose is for near-real-time delivery, not real-time processing.
- B
Amazon DynamoDB Streams for ingestion, AWS Lambda for processing, and Amazon Redshift for storage.
Why wrong: DynamoDB Streams is for table changes, not IoT data ingestion.
- C
Amazon SQS for ingestion, AWS Lambda for processing, and Amazon DynamoDB for storage.
Why wrong: SQS is not suitable for high-throughput streaming and Lambda may have concurrency limits.
- D
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams for ingestion, Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics for real-time processing, and Amazon S3 as a staging area before loading into Amazon Redshift.
Kinesis Data Streams handles high throughput, Data Analytics processes in real-time, and S3 integrates with Redshift.
Quick Answer
The correct combination is Amazon Kinesis Data Streams for ingestion, Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics for real-time processing, and Amazon S3 as a staging area before loading into Amazon Redshift. This works because Kinesis Data Streams handles millions of events per second with durable, ordered shards, while Kinesis Data Analytics applies real-time SQL or Apache Flink transformations directly on the stream, enabling streaming data ingestion and real-time processing for the data warehouse. On the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional SAP-C02 exam, this scenario tests your ability to decouple ingestion from storage and avoid throttling the pipeline—a common trap is choosing Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose for processing, but Firehose lacks native real-time analytics and can bottleneck high-throughput streams. The key insight is that Redshift loads best from S3, not directly from a stream, so S3 acts as a resilient staging buffer. Memory tip: think “Stream, Analyze, Stage, Load”—SASL, where the stream and analysis happen in Kinesis, then S3 stages before Redshift.
SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
This SAP-C02 practice question tests your understanding of design for new solutions. 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 designing a new solution to process streaming data from IoT devices. The data must be ingested, processed in real-time, and stored in a data warehouse for analytics. The company expects millions of events per second. Which combination of AWS services should be used?
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 Streams for ingestion, Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics for real-time processing, and Amazon S3 as a staging area before loading into Amazon Redshift.
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams can ingest millions of events per second with durable, ordered shards, while Kinesis Data Analytics provides real-time SQL or Apache Flink processing on the stream. Amazon S3 acts as a staging layer before loading into Amazon Redshift via COPY or Redshift Spectrum, enabling scalable analytics without throttling the ingestion pipeline.
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.
- ✗
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose for ingestion and delivery to Amazon S3, then use AWS Glue for ETL into Amazon Redshift.
Why it's wrong here
Firehose is for near-real-time delivery, not real-time processing.
- ✗
Amazon DynamoDB Streams for ingestion, AWS Lambda for processing, and Amazon Redshift for storage.
Why it's wrong here
DynamoDB Streams is for table changes, not IoT data ingestion.
- ✗
Amazon SQS for ingestion, AWS Lambda for processing, and Amazon DynamoDB for storage.
Why it's wrong here
SQS is not suitable for high-throughput streaming and Lambda may have concurrency limits.
- ✓
Amazon Kinesis Data Streams for ingestion, Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics for real-time processing, and Amazon S3 as a staging area before loading into Amazon Redshift.
Why this is correct
Kinesis Data Streams handles high throughput, Data Analytics processes in real-time, and S3 integrates with Redshift.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
Cisco often tests the distinction between Kinesis Data Streams (real-time, sub-second) and Kinesis Data Firehose (near-real-time, minutes of latency), leading candidates to choose Firehose for real-time requirements.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Kinesis Data Streams uses shards to scale ingestion; each shard supports 1 MB/s write and 2 MB/s read, so millions of events per second require hundreds or thousands of shards, which can be managed via auto-scaling or on-demand mode. Kinesis Data Analytics processes data in-stream using Apache Flink, allowing stateful operations like windowed aggregations before data lands in S3. Redshift Spectrum can query data directly from S3 without loading, reducing storage costs and enabling separation of compute and storage.
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 media company stores terabytes of video archives that are accessed once a year for audit purposes. Moving these objects to a cold storage tier (Azure Archive, S3 Glacier, or Google Nearline) costs a fraction of hot storage. Questions like this test whether you understand storage tiers, access frequency tradeoffs, and retrieval latency requirements.
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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Design for New Solutions — study guide chapter
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FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this SAP-C02 question test?
Design for New Solutions — This question tests Design for New Solutions — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Amazon Kinesis Data Streams for ingestion, Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics for real-time processing, and Amazon S3 as a staging area before loading into Amazon Redshift. — Amazon Kinesis Data Streams can ingest millions of events per second with durable, ordered shards, while Kinesis Data Analytics provides real-time SQL or Apache Flink processing on the stream. Amazon S3 acts as a staging layer before loading into Amazon Redshift via COPY or Redshift Spectrum, enabling scalable analytics without throttling the ingestion pipeline.
What should I do if I get this SAP-C02 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
Courseiva creates original exam-style practice questions with explanations and wrong-answer analysis. It does not publish real exam questions, exam dumps, or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
Same concept, more angles
1 more ways this is tested on SAP-C02
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 designing a solution to process real-time streaming data from IoT devices. The data must be ingested, processed with sub-second latency, and stored for analytics. Which services should the company use? (Choose TWO.)
medium- ✓ A.AWS Lambda
- ✓ B.Amazon Kinesis Data Streams
- C.Amazon SQS
- D.Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics
- E.Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose
Why A: Amazon Kinesis Data Streams ingests streaming data with sub-second latency. AWS Lambda processes data in near real-time. Option C (Kinesis Data Firehose) is for loading to S3 with higher latency. Option D (SQS) is for message queuing. Option E (Kinesis Data Analytics) is for SQL analytics on streams.
Last reviewed: Jun 24, 2026
This SAP-C02 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 SAP-C02 exam.
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