AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C02) — Question 275

A disaster response team is using drones to collect images of recent storm damage. The response team's laptops lack the storage and compute capacity to transfer the images and process the data. While the team has Amazon EC2 instances for processing and Amazon S3 buckets for storage, network connectivity is intermittent and unreliable. The images need to be processed to evaluate the damage.
What should a solutions architect recommend?

Answer options

• A. Use AWS Snowball Edge devices to process and store the images.
• B. Upload the images to Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) during intermittent connectivity to EC2 instances.
• C. Configure Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose to create multiple delivery streams aimed separately at the S3 buckets for storage and the EC2 instances for processing the images.
• D. Use AWS Storage Gateway pre-installed on a hardware appliance to cache the images locally for Amazon S3 to process the images when connectivity becomes available.

Correct answer: A

Explanation

AWS Snowball Edge devices provide local storage and compute capabilities (including EC2-compatible instances) in disconnected or harsh environments, making them ideal for processing drone images without reliable internet access. Options B and C require a stable internet connection to stream or upload data to AWS services like Amazon SQS or Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose, which is unfeasible due to intermittent connectivity. Option D (AWS Storage Gateway) does not provide the local compute capacity required to process the images immediately before uploading.