AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) — Question 684

A company maintains about 300 TB in Amazon S3 Standard storage month after month. The S3 objects are each typically around 50 GB in size and are frequently replaced with multipart uploads by their global application. The number and size of S3 objects remain constant, but the company's S3 storage costs are increasing each month.

How should a solutions architect reduce costs in this situation?

Answer options

• A. Switch from multipart uploads to Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration.
• B. Enable an S3 Lifecycle policy that deletes incomplete multipart uploads.
• C. Configure S3 inventory to prevent objects from being archived too quickly.
• D. Configure Amazon CloudFront to reduce the number of objects stored in Amazon S3.

Correct answer: B

Explanation

When multipart uploads are initiated but not completed, the uploaded segments remain stored in Amazon S3 and incur standard storage charges, even though they are not visible as completed objects. Implementing an S3 Lifecycle policy with the AbortIncompleteMultipartUpload action automatically deletes these orphaned parts, resolving the unexplained cost increases. The other options do not address the accumulation of incomplete multipart upload fragments, which is the root cause of the rising fees.