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DEA-C01 practice question: Monitoring and logging pipelines (3 of 3)

Data Operations and Support A free question from our original DEA-C01 practice exam. Try it, then open the answer to see why each option is right or wrong.

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A retail bank has a Kinesis Data Streams stream that feeds a Lambda function, which writes transactions to an analytics store. The team has seen several incidents in which the function fell behind during busy hours, and records sat in the stream for many minutes before anyone noticed.

The team wants an alarm that fires as soon as the consumer falls behind, using metrics that AWS already publishes, with no change to the function's code.

Which TWO actions meet these requirements? (Choose two.)

Choose two answers.

  1. A. Enable AWS CloudTrail data events for the stream, and query the events in CloudTrail Lake for each slow record.
  2. B. Increase the Lambda function's memory setting and its timeout, so that the function processes each batch faster and never falls behind.
  3. C. Create a CloudWatch alarm on the stream's GetRecords.IteratorAgeMilliseconds metric, which shows how long records waited.
  4. D. Create a CloudWatch alarm on the Lambda function's IteratorAge metric, which Lambda publishes for stream sources.
  5. E. Add a CloudWatch Logs subscription filter that sends the function's logs to a Lambda function that counts the log lines each minute.
Show the answer and explanation

Answers: C, D

  • A. Wrong: CloudTrail data events record API calls, not how far behind a consumer is. Querying them per record is slow and does not alarm when the lag grows.
  • B. Wrong: More memory can speed up processing, but the team wants an alarm that reports lag, not a faster function. The option does not add monitoring and cannot promise no lag under peak load.
  • C. Right: Correct. Iterator age measures how long records waited in the stream before being read, which is the lag the team wants to see. An alarm on it fires when the consumer falls behind, and Kinesis publishes the metric without code changes. Learn more: Monitor the Amazon Kinesis Data Streams service with Amazon CloudWatch (opens in a new tab)
  • D. Right: Correct. Lambda publishes IteratorAge for functions that read from a stream, and an alarm on it shows the consumer's lag. The alarm needs no change to the function's code. Learn more: Using Lambda to process records from Amazon Kinesis Data Streams (opens in a new tab)
  • E. Wrong: Counting log lines measures output volume, not how old the records are. The option does not describe the lag and would not alarm on it.

Explanation

Iterator age is the measure of consumer lag. Kinesis publishes an iterator age metric for the stream, and Lambda publishes one for functions that read from a stream, so an alarm on either shows when records wait too long. CloudTrail, memory tuning and log counts do not report how far behind the consumer is.

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