AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C02) — Question 369

A company is creating a web application that will store a large number of images in Amazon S3. The images will be accessed by users over variable periods of time. The company wants to:
✑ Retain all the images
✑ Incur no cost for retrieval.
✑ Have minimal management overhead.
✑ Have the images available with no impact on retrieval time.
Which solution meets these requirements?

Answer options

• A. Implement S3 Intelligent-Tiering
• B. Implement S3 storage class analysis
• C. Implement an S3 Lifecycle policy to move data to S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA).
• D. Implement an S3 Lifecycle policy to move data to S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA).

Correct answer: A

Explanation

S3 Intelligent-Tiering automatically optimizes storage costs by moving data between access tiers with zero retrieval fees and no impact on retrieval times, making it ideal for unpredictable access patterns with minimal overhead. Conversely, both S3 Standard-IA and S3 One Zone-IA incur retrieval fees, which violates the requirement of having no retrieval costs. S3 storage class analysis only monitors access patterns to help configure lifecycle policies manually, which does not automate the data movement with zero management overhead.