AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C02) — Question 736

A company needs to retain application log files for a critical application for 10 years. The application team regularly accesses logs from the past month for troubleshooting, but logs older than 1 month are rarely accessed. The application generates more than 10 TB of logs per month.
Which storage option meets these requirements MOST cost-effectively?

Answer options

• A. Store the logs in Amazon S3. Use AWS Backup to move logs more than 1 month old to S3 Glacier Deep Archive.
• B. Store the logs in Amazon S3. Use S3 Lifecycle policies to move logs more than 1 month old to S3 Glacier Deep Archive.
• C. Store the logs in Amazon CloudWatch Logs. Use AWS Backup to move logs more than 1 month old to S3 Glacier Deep Archive.
• D. Store the logs in Amazon CloudWatch Logs. Use Amazon S3 Lifecycle policies to move logs more than 1 month old to S3 Glacier Deep Archive.

Correct answer: B

Explanation

Storing the logs in Amazon S3 and using S3 Lifecycle policies is the most cost-effective solution because S3 offers lower ingestion and storage costs for high-volume logs compared to Amazon CloudWatch Logs. S3 Lifecycle policies natively transition objects to S3 Glacier Deep Archive for ultra-low-cost long-term retention without the added complexity or cost of AWS Backup. CloudWatch Logs is not designed for cheap 10-year storage of TB-scale data, making options C and D financially impractical.