AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C02) — Question 605

A company uses 50 TB of data for reporting. The company wants to move this data from on premises to AWS. A custom application in the company's data center runs a weekly data transformation job. The company plans to pause the application until the data transfer is complete and needs to begin the transfer process as soon as possible.
The data center does not have any available network bandwidth for additional workloads. A solutions architect must transfer the data and must configure the transformation job to continue to run in the AWS Cloud.
Which solution will meet these requirements with the LEAST operational overhead?

Answer options

• A. Use AWS DataSync to move the data. Create a custom transformation job by using AWS Glue.
• B. Order an AWS Snowcone device to move the data. Deploy the transformation application to the device.
• C. Order an AWS Snowball Edge Storage Optimized device. Copy the data to the device. Create a custom transformation job by using AWS Glue.
• D. Order an AWS Snowball Edge Storage Optimized device that includes Amazon EC2 compute. Copy the data to the device. Create a new EC2 instance on AWS to run the transformation application.

Correct answer: C

Explanation

An AWS Snowball Edge Storage Optimized device is ideal for offline migrations of up to 80 TB of data, making it perfect for this 50 TB scenario where network bandwidth is unavailable. AWS Glue is a fully managed, serverless ETL service that reduces operational overhead compared to deploying and maintaining custom applications on Amazon EC2 instances. AWS DataSync is incorrect because it requires network bandwidth, and AWS Snowcone is incorrect because its storage capacity is too small for a 50 TB payload.