AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C02) — Question 695

A company uses Amazon S3 as its data lake. The company has a new partner that must use SFTP to upload data files. A solutions architect needs to implement a highly available SFTP solution that minimizes operational overhead.
Which solution will meet these requirements?

Answer options

• A. Use AWS Transfer Family to configure an SFTP-enabled server with a publicly accessible endpoint. Choose the S3 data lake as the destination.
• B. Use Amazon S3 File Gateway as an SFTP server. Expose the S3 File Gateway endpoint URL to the new partner. Share the S3 File Gateway endpoint with the new partner.
• C. Launch an Amazon EC2 instance in a private subnet in a VPC. Instruct the new partner to upload files to the EC2 instance by using a VPN. Run a cron job script on the EC2 instance to upload files to the S3 data lake.
• D. Launch Amazon EC2 instances in a private subnet in a VPC. Place a Network Load Balancer (NLB) in front of the EC2 instances. Create an SFTP listener port for the NLB. Share the NLB hostname with the new partner. Run a cron job script on the EC2 instances to upload files to the S3 data lake.

Correct answer: A

Explanation

AWS Transfer Family is a fully managed, highly available service that natively supports SFTP and integrates directly with Amazon S3, minimizing operational overhead. Utilizing self-managed Amazon EC2 instances with cron jobs introduces significant administrative overhead for maintenance, scaling, and scripting. Amazon S3 File Gateway is designed for file-based applications to access S3 via NFS or SMB, not as a public-facing SFTP server for external partners.