AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) — Question 365

A company has an application that collects data from IoT sensors on automobiles. The data is streamed and stored in Amazon S3 through Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose. The data produces trillions of S3 objects each year. Each morning, the company uses the data from the previous 30 days to retrain a suite of machine learning (ML) models.

Four times each year, the company uses the data from the previous 12 months to perform analysis and train other ML models. The data must be available with minimal delay for up to 1 year. After 1 year, the data must be retained for archival purposes.

Which storage solution meets these requirements MOST cost-effectively?

Answer options

• A. Use the S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage class. Create an S3 Lifecycle policy to transition objects to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 1 year.
• B. Use the S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage class. Configure S3 Intelligent-Tiering to automatically move objects to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 1 year.
• C. Use the S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) storage class. Create an S3 Lifecycle policy to transition objects to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 1 year.
• D. Use the S3 Standard storage class. Create an S3 Lifecycle policy to transition objects to S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) after 30 days, and then to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 1 year.

Correct answer: D

Explanation

Using S3 Intelligent-Tiering (Options A and B) is not cost-effective for trillions of objects because of the per-object monitoring and automation fees. Starting directly with S3 Standard-IA (Option C) would result in high retrieval charges due to the daily access required during the first 30 days. Option D is optimal because it uses S3 Standard for free daily access during the first 30 days, transitions to S3 Standard-IA for the less frequently accessed quarterly analysis period, and archives to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after one year.