AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) — Question 821

A company has an on-premises business application that generates hundreds of files each day. These files are stored on an SMB file share and require a low-latency connection to the application servers. A new company policy states all application-generated files must be copied to AWS. There is already a VPN connection to AWS.

The application development team does not have time to make the necessary code modifications to move the application to AWS.

Which service should a solutions architect recommend to allow the application to copy files to AWS?

Answer options

• A. Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS)
• B. Amazon FSx for Windows File Server
• C. AWS Snowball
• D. AWS Storage Gateway

Correct answer: D

Explanation

AWS Storage Gateway (specifically File Gateway) allows on-premises applications to seamlessly store files as objects in AWS S3 using the SMB protocol without requiring application code changes, while maintaining a local cache for low-latency access. Amazon EFS and Amazon FSx are cloud-based file systems that do not provide the necessary on-premises local caching to guarantee low latency over a VPN connection. AWS Snowball is designed for one-time, offline physical data migrations rather than continuous, automated daily file replication.