AmazonAmazon Data Engineer Associate DEA-C01 Certification·EN·Updated 2 Aug 2026
A company uses AWS Step Functions to orchestrate a data pipeline that runs Amazon EMR jobs to ingest data into Amazon S3 and to load data into Amazon Redshift. The Step Functions state machine was created manually. An EMR cluster was launched in a VPC, but the deployed state machine cannot run the EMR jobs. Which combination of steps should the company take to determine why the state machine cannot run the EMR jobs? (Choose two.)
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Correct answer: Verify that the Step Functions state machine code has all IAM permissions that are necessary to create and run the EMR jobs. Verify that the Step Functions state machine code also includes IAM permissions to access the Amazon S3 buckets that the EMR jobs use. Use Access Analyzer for S3 to check the S3 access properties., Query the flow logs for the VPC. Determine whether the traffic that originates from the EMR cluster can successfully reach the data providers. Determine whether any security group that might be attached to the Amazon EMR cluster allows connections to the data source servers on the informed ports..
Why this is the answer
The first correct option addresses a common cause of service interaction failures: insufficient permissions. Step Functions needs explicit IAM permissions to interact with other AWS services like EMR and S3. Without these, it cannot launch or manage EMR jobs, nor can EMR access S3 buckets. Access Analyzer for S3 helps verify S3 access policies.
The second correct option focuses on network connectivity, crucial for services within a VPC. EMR jobs need to communicate with data sources and potentially other services. VPC Flow Logs reveal if traffic is blocked, and checking security group rules ensures that necessary ports are open for communication between the EMR cluster and its targets.
The incorrect options propose solutions for different problems. Automating deployment with CloudFormation or configuring retries/fallbacks are good practices but don't diagnose why initial EMR jobs fail to run. Suggesting EMR on EKS is a change in architecture, not a diagnostic step for an existing EMR cluster.