AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) — Question 1019

A company currently stores 5 TB of data in on-premises block storage systems. The company's current storage solution provides limited space for additional data. The company runs applications on premises that must be able to retrieve frequently accessed data with low latency. The company requires a cloud-based storage solution.

Which solution will meet these requirements with the MOST operational efficiency?

Answer options

• A. Use Amazon S3 File Gateway. Integrate S3 File Gateway with the on-premises applications to store and directly retrieve files by using the SMB file system.
• B. Use an AWS Storage Gateway Volume Gateway with cached volumes as iSCSI targets.
• C. Use an AWS Storage Gateway Volume Gateway with stored volumes as iSCSI targets.
• D. Use an AWS Storage Gateway Tape Gateway. Integrate Tape Gateway with the on-premises applications to store virtual tapes in Amazon S3.

Correct answer: B

Explanation

Volume Gateway with cached volumes is the ideal solution because it stores the primary data in Amazon S3 while retaining a cache of the most frequently accessed data locally, solving the local storage limitation while maintaining low latency. Stored volumes (Option C) would require the entire dataset to be stored on-premises, which does not address the local capacity constraint. File Gateway (Option A) provides file-level access rather than block storage, and Tape Gateway (Option D) is designed for backup archiving rather than active application workloads.