AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) — Question 521

A data analytics company wants to migrate its batch processing system to AWS. The company receives thousands of small data files periodically during the day through FTP. An on-premises batch job processes the data files overnight. However, the batch job takes hours to finish running.

The company wants the AWS solution to process incoming data files as soon as possible with minimal changes to the FTP clients that send the files. The solution must delete the incoming data files after the files have been processed successfully. Processing for each file needs to take 3-8 minutes.

Which solution will meet these requirements in the MOST operationally efficient way?

Answer options

• A. Use an Amazon EC2 instance that runs an FTP server to store incoming files as objects in Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval. Configure a job queue in AWS Batch. Use Amazon EventBridge rules to invoke the job to process the objects nightly from S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval. Delete the objects after the job has processed the objects.
• B. Use an Amazon EC2 instance that runs an FTP server to store incoming files on an Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume. Configure a job queue in AWS Batch. Use Amazon EventBridge rules to invoke the job to process the files nightly from the EBS volume. Delete the files after the job has processed the files.
• C. Use AWS Transfer Family to create an FTP server to store incoming files on an Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume. Configure a job queue in AWS Batch. Use an Amazon S3 event notification when each file arrives to invoke the job in AWS Batch. Delete the files after the job has processed the files.
• D. Use AWS Transfer Family to create an FTP server to store incoming files in Amazon S3 Standard. Create an AWS Lambda function to process the files and to delete the files after they are processed. Use an S3 event notification to invoke the Lambda function when the files arrive.

Correct answer: D

Explanation

AWS Transfer Family provides a fully managed FTP service that integrates natively with Amazon S3 Standard, removing the operational overhead of managing EC2 instances. Since each file takes 3 to 8 minutes to process, AWS Lambda is the ideal compute choice because its execution limit is 15 minutes, enabling immediate, event-driven processing via S3 event notifications. Options A and B introduce unnecessary EC2 management and process files nightly rather than immediately, while Option C is invalid as AWS Transfer Family does not natively write to Amazon EBS volumes.