AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) — Question 537

A company has a financial application that produces reports. The reports average 50 KB in size and are stored in Amazon S3. The reports are frequently accessed during the first week after production and must be stored for several years. The reports must be retrievable within 6 hours.

Which solution meets these requirements MOST cost-effectively?

Answer options

• A. Use S3 Standard. Use an S3 Lifecycle rule to transition the reports to S3 Glacier after 7 days.
• B. Use S3 Standard. Use an S3 Lifecycle rule to transition the reports to S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) after 7 days.
• C. Use S3 Intelligent-Tiering. Configure S3 Intelligent-Tiering to transition the reports to S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) and S3 Glacier.
• D. Use S3 Standard. Use an S3 Lifecycle rule to transition the reports to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 7 days.

Correct answer: A

Explanation

S3 Glacier is the most cost-effective option because its standard retrieval time of 3 to 5 hours satisfies the requirement to retrieve data within 6 hours, unlike S3 Glacier Deep Archive which takes up to 12 hours. S3 Standard-IA is not cost-effective for 50 KB files because it charges a minimum storage size of 128 KB per object. S3 Intelligent-Tiering is also unsuitable as it does not transition objects smaller than 128 KB to infrequent or archive tiers and incurs additional monitoring fees.