AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C02) — Question 290

A company wants a storage option that enables its data science team to analyze its data on premises and in the AWS Cloud. The team needs to be able to run statistical analyses by using the data on premises and by using a fleet of Amazon EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones.
What should a solutions architect do to meet these requirements?

Answer options

• A. Use an AWS Storage Gateway tape gateway to copy the on-premises files into Amazon S3.
• B. Use an AWS Storage Gateway volume gateway to copy the on-premises files into Amazon S3.
• C. Use an AWS Storage Gateway file gateway to copy the on-premises files to Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS).
• D. Attach an Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) file system to the on-premises servers. Copy the files to Amazon EFS.

Correct answer: D

Explanation

Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) supports concurrent access from on-premises servers (via AWS Direct Connect or VPN) and Amazon EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones, making it the ideal choice for this shared analysis workload. Options A and B are incorrect because tape and volume gateways are designed for backup and block storage replication rather than active, concurrent file-level analysis. Option C is incorrect because AWS Storage Gateway file gateway stores data in Amazon S3, not Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), and EBS volumes cannot be attached to on-premises servers.