AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C02) — Question 507

A company is designing a shared storage solution for a gaming application that is hosted in the AWS Cloud. The company needs the ability to use SMB clients to access data. The solution must be fully managed.
Which AWS solution meets these requirements?

Answer options

• A. Create an AWS DataSync task that shares the data as a mountable file system. Mount the file system to the application server.
• B. Create an Amazon EC2 Windows instance. Install and configure a Windows file share role on the instance. Connect the application server to the file share.
• C. Create an Amazon FSx for Windows File Server file system. Attach the file system to the origin server. Connect the application server to the file system.
• D. Create an Amazon S3 bucket. Assign an IAM role to the application to grant access to the S3 bucket. Mount the S3 bucket to the application server.

Correct answer: C

Explanation

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server provides a fully managed shared file storage solution that natively supports the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. Option B is incorrect because running a file server on an Amazon EC2 instance requires manual administration and is not a fully managed solution. Options A and D are incorrect as AWS DataSync is a data transfer service and Amazon S3 is object storage, neither of which natively serves as a fully managed SMB file system for this architecture.