AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) — Question 805

A company uses Amazon EC2 instances and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) to run its self-managed database. The company has 350 TB of data spread across all EBS volumes. The company takes daily EBS snapshots and keeps the snapshots for 1 month. The daily change rate is 5% of the EBS volumes.

Because of new regulations, the company needs to keep the monthly snapshots for 7 years. The company needs to change its backup strategy to comply with the new regulations and to ensure that data is available with minimal administrative effort.

Which solution will meet these requirements MOST cost-effectively?

Answer options

• A. Keep the daily snapshot in the EBS snapshot standard tier for 1 month. Copy the monthly snapshot to Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive with a 7-year retention period.
• B. Continue with the current EBS snapshot policy. Add a new policy to move the monthly snapshot to Amazon EBS Snapshots Archive with a 7-year retention period.
• C. Keep the daily snapshot in the EBS snapshot standard tier for 1 month. Keep the monthly snapshot in the standard tier for 7 years. Use incremental snapshots.
• D. Keep the daily snapshot in the EBS snapshot standard tier. Use EBS direct APIs to take snapshots of all the EBS volumes every month. Store the snapshots in an Amazon S3 bucket in the Infrequent Access tier for 7 years.

Correct answer: B

Explanation

Amazon EBS Snapshots Archive provides a highly cost-effective storage tier designed specifically for low-cost, long-term retention of EBS snapshots that do not need frequent access. Transitioning snapshots to the Archive tier can be fully automated using Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM) or AWS Backup, ensuring minimal administrative overhead. Storing snapshots in the standard tier for 7 years is too expensive, while solutions involving S3 Glacier or EBS direct APIs introduce significant administrative complexity.