AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) — Question 678

A company is migrating a large amount of data from on-premises storage to AWS. Windows, Mac, and Linux based Amazon EC2 instances in the same AWS Region will access the data by using SMB and NFS storage protocols. The company will access a portion of the data routinely. The company will access the remaining data infrequently.

The company needs to design a solution to host the data.

Which solution will meet these requirements with the LEAST operational overhead?

Answer options

• A. Create an Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) volume that uses EFS Intelligent-Tiering. Use AWS DataSync to migrate the data to the EFS volume.
• B. Create an Amazon FSx for ONTAP instance. Create an FSx for ONTAP file system with a root volume that uses the auto tiering policy. Migrate the data to the FSx for ONTAP volume.
• C. Create an Amazon S3 bucket that uses S3 Intelligent-Tiering. Migrate the data to the S3 bucket by using an AWS Storage Gateway Amazon S3 File Gateway.
• D. Create an Amazon FSx for OpenZFS file system. Migrate the data to the new volume.

Correct answer: B

Explanation

Amazon FSx for ONTAP natively supports both SMB and NFS protocols, making it perfect for multi-platform environments consisting of Windows, Mac, and Linux clients, while its auto-tiering policy automatically optimizes costs between active and inactive data. Amazon EFS (Option A) and Amazon FSx for OpenZFS (Option D) do not support the required combination of SMB and NFS with built-in auto-tiering. Using an AWS Storage Gateway with Amazon S3 (Option C) meets the protocol requirements but introduces significantly higher operational overhead compared to a fully managed FSx for ONTAP file system.