AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C02) — Question 286

A solutions architect needs to design a network that will allow multiple Amazon EC2 instances to access a common data source used for mission-critical data that can be accessed by all the EC2 instances simultaneously. The solution must be highly scalable, easy to implement and support the NFS protocol.
Which solution meets these requirements?

Answer options

• A. Create an Amazon EFS file system. Configure a mount target in each Availability Zone. Attach each instance to the appropriate mount target.
• B. Create an additional EC2 instance and configure it as a file server. Create a security group that allows communication between the instances and apply that to the additional instance.
• C. Create an Amazon S3 bucket with the appropriate permissions. Create a role in AWS IAM that grants the correct permissions to the S3 bucket. Attach the role to the EC2 instances that need access to the data.
• D. Create an Amazon EBS volume with the appropriate permissions. Create a role in AWS IAM that grants the correct permissions to the EBS volume. Attach the role to the EC2 instances that need access to the data.

Correct answer: A

Explanation

Amazon EFS is a fully managed, highly scalable file system that natively supports the NFSv4 protocol and allows thousands of Amazon EC2 instances to access data concurrently. Setting up a custom EC2 file server is complex and not highly scalable, while Amazon S3 and Amazon EBS do not natively support the NFS protocol for simultaneous multi-instance mounting in this standard configuration.