DEA-C01
Free AWS Certified Data Engineer - Associate Practice Test
12 exam-style questions with full explanations — no sign-up. Score yourself, then close your gaps with the full course.
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A streaming application produces data at a sustained rate of 4,500 records per second, with an average record size of 800 bytes. A team is provisioning an Amazon Kinesis Data Stream in provisioned mode and needs the minimum shard count that avoids throttling. Each shard supports up to 1 MiB/s (or 1,000 records/second) for writes. How many shards are required?
Byte throughput is 4,500 x 800 bytes = 3.6 MB/s, requiring ceil(3.6/1) = 4 shards. Record count is 4,500/1,000 = 4.5, requiring 5 shards. The stream must satisfy BOTH limits per shard, so the binding (higher) requirement of 5 shards is the minimum needed.
A company has a Redshift provisioned cluster with a fact table `orders` (500 million rows) frequently joined with a dimension table `customers` (50,000 rows) on `customer_id`. Query plans show heavy data redistribution during the join, causing slow performance. Which distribution style configuration BEST resolves this?
ALL distribution copies the small dimension table (customers) to every node, eliminating redistribution during the join. KEY distribution on the join column (customer_id) for the large fact table (orders) co-locates matching rows on the same node, minimizing data movement. This is the standard best practice for large fact / small dimension joins.
A data engineer needs to automatically reject records that have null values in the 'customer_id' column before loading data into a Redshift table using an AWS Glue ETL job. Which approach BEST meets this requirement with the LEAST amount of custom code?
AWS Glue Data Quality lets you define declarative rules using DQDL (Data Quality Definition Language), such as IsComplete, directly in the Glue job. This built-in capability evaluates and can quarantine or fail non-compliant records with no custom transformation code required.
A financial services company uses AWS Lake Formation to manage a Glue Data Catalog table containing sales data for all regions. Analysts in the EU team must only see rows where region='EU', while analysts in the US team must only see rows where region='US'. The company wants to enforce this using Lake Formation without creating separate copies of the table or database views. Which approach BEST meets this requirement?
Lake Formation row-level security is implemented through data filters (also called data cell filters), which can restrict rows by a column predicate. Granting SELECT with a specific data filter attached lets you scope different row subsets to different principals on the same underlying table, with no data duplication.
A data engineering team must migrate an on-premises PostgreSQL database to Amazon RDS and then keep the target continuously synchronized with ongoing transactional changes until cutover. Which AWS DMS migration type should be selected for the replication task?
The 'Migrate existing data and replicate ongoing changes' task type performs an initial full load of existing table data and then automatically captures and applies ongoing changes (CDC) until cutover, which exactly matches the stated requirement.
A gaming company needs single-digit-millisecond latency for player profile lookups by primary key, with traffic that spikes unpredictably up to 10x normal volume with no advance warning. Which service is BEST suited for this workload?
DynamoDB delivers consistent single-digit-millisecond latency for key-based lookups at any scale, and on-demand capacity mode automatically absorbs sudden, unpredictable traffic spikes without capacity planning or throttling risk.
A company's AWS Glue ETL job runs nightly and occasionally fails due to transient network issues. The data engineering team wants to be notified by email within minutes whenever a job run fails, using the least operational overhead. Which solution meets this requirement?
AWS Glue automatically emits a 'Glue Job State Change' event to EventBridge whenever a job run completes, fails, times out, or stops. An EventBridge rule filtered on state=FAILED, targeting SNS, delivers near-real-time notification with no polling and minimal configuration.
A company stores non-sensitive log data in S3 and wants encryption at rest enabled by default. There is no requirement to control or audit key usage, and the team wants to minimize both cost and management overhead. Which S3 encryption option should they choose?
SSE-S3 (SSE-AES256) uses keys fully managed by S3 at no additional cost and with zero key management overhead, which is ideal when there's no requirement for audit trails on key usage or custom key policies.
A Glue ETL job has job bookmarks enabled, but every run reprocesses all files in the source S3 path instead of only the files added since the last run. What is the MOST likely cause?
Glue job bookmarks track state per transformation context. If the DynamicFrame creation call omits the transformation_ctx parameter, Glue cannot associate bookmark state with that data source, so it re-reads all files on every run regardless of the bookmark setting.
An engineer enables S3 Intelligent-Tiering on a bucket containing millions of log files, most of which are under 100KB. What is the exam-relevant behavior of Intelligent-Tiering for these small objects?
S3 Intelligent-Tiering does not monitor or move objects smaller than 128KB; they remain billed at the Frequent Access tier rate with no monitoring/automation charge, since the fee only applies to objects large enough where tiering produces net savings.
An Amazon Redshift cluster experiences periodic spikes in concurrent read-only reporting queries during month-end close, causing WLM queue wait times to increase significantly. Query performance is acceptable during the rest of the month. Which change addresses the spikes with the LEAST added ongoing cost?
Concurrency Scaling automatically adds transient, temporary clusters only during bursts of concurrent query activity and removes them when the burst ends, so you pay only for the extra capacity used during spikes (with free credit hours accrued daily), avoiding a permanent cost increase.
A data engineer configures AWS Secrets Manager to automatically rotate the master password for an Amazon Redshift cluster using the single-user rotation strategy. During the rotation Lambda function's four-step process, which step is responsible for verifying that the newly generated password actually works before the rotation is finalized?
The testSecret step in the Secrets Manager rotation Lambda template connects to the database using the AWSPENDING version of the secret to confirm the new credential is valid before the rotation completes.
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How much does the DEA-C01 exam cost?
The exam fee is approximately $150 and varies by region — confirm current pricing with the certification vendor before you book.
What topics are on the exam?
It covers 4 domains: Data Ingestion and Transformation (34%), Data Store Management (26%), Data Operations and Support (22%), Data Security and Governance (18%). The full course has a dedicated chapter, lab and practice-test coverage for each.
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Will this prepare me for the real exam?
The questions mirror the real exam's style and are mapped to the official domains. This is exam-focused preparation — combine the free test with the full course's timed simulations to gauge your readiness.