AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) — Question 406

A company is storing petabytes of data in Amazon S3 Standard. The data is stored in multiple S3 buckets and is accessed with varying frequency. The company does not know access patterns for all the data. The company needs to implement a solution for each S3 bucket to optimize the cost of S3 usage.

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

Answer options

• A. Create an S3 Lifecycle configuration with a rule to transition the objects in the S3 bucket to S3 Intelligent-Tiering.
• B. Use the S3 storage class analysis tool to determine the correct tier for each object in the S3 bucket. Move each object to the identified storage tier.
• C. Create an S3 Lifecycle configuration with a rule to transition the objects in the S3 bucket to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval.
• D. Create an S3 Lifecycle configuration with a rule to transition the objects in the S3 bucket to S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA).

Correct answer: A

Explanation

Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering automatically optimizes storage costs by moving data between frequent and infrequent access tiers when access patterns are unknown or unpredictable, requiring no operational overhead. S3 storage class analysis requires manual intervention and analysis, which is less operationally efficient. Transitioning directly to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval or S3 One Zone-IA without knowing access patterns could lead to high retrieval charges or unnecessary performance trade-offs.