AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C02) — Question 383
A company stores call recordings on a monthly basis. Statistically, the recorded data may be referenced randomly within a year but accessed rarely after 1 year.
Files that are newer than 1 year old must be queried and retrieved as quickly as possible. A delay in retrieving older files is acceptable. A solutions architect needs to store the recorded data at a minimal cost.
Which solution is MOST cost-effective?
Answer options
- A. Store individual files in Amazon S3 Glacier and store search metadata in object tags created in S3 Glacier Query S3 Glacier tags and retrieve the files from S3 Glacier.
- B. Store individual files in Amazon S3. Use lifecycle policies to move the files to Amazon S3 Glacier after1 year. Query and retrieve the files from Amazon S3 or S3 Glacier.
- C. Archive individual files and store search metadata for each archive in Amazon S3. Use lifecycle policies to move the files to Amazon S3 Glacier after 1 year. Query and retrieve the files by searching for metadata from Amazon S3.
- D. Archive individual files in Amazon S3. Use lifecycle policies to move the files to Amazon S3 Glacier after 1 year. Store search metadata in Amazon DynamoDB. Query the files from DynamoDB and retrieve them from Amazon S3 or S3 Glacier.
Correct answer: B
Explanation
Storing individual files in Amazon S3 Standard allows for immediate access during the first year, while S3 Lifecycle policies seamlessly transition them to Amazon S3 Glacier after 1 year to minimize storage costs. This approach is the most cost-effective because it does not incur the extra infrastructure costs or maintenance overhead of external databases like Amazon DynamoDB or custom metadata archiving processes. Option A is incorrect because S3 Glacier does not support the near-instantaneous retrieval required for files under a year old.