AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) — Question 876

A company runs a self-managed Microsoft SQL Server on Amazon EC2 instances and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS). Daily snapshots are taken of the EBS volumes.

Recently, all the company’s EBS snapshots were accidentally deleted while running a snapshot cleaning script that deletes all expired EBS snapshots. A solutions architect needs to update the architecture to prevent data loss without retaining EBS snapshots indefinitely.

Which solution will meet these requirements with the LEAST development effort?

Answer options

• A. Change the IAM policy of the user to deny EBS snapshot deletion.
• B. Copy the EBS snapshots to another AWS Region after completing the snapshots daily.
• C. Create a 7-day EBS snapshot retention rule in Recycle Bin and apply the rule for all snapshots.
• D. Copy EBS snapshots to Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA).

Correct answer: C

Explanation

Configuring a Recycle Bin retention rule for EBS snapshots provides a simple safety net to recover accidentally deleted snapshots with zero development effort. Modifying the IAM policy to deny deletion would block the cleanup script from functioning entirely, leading to indefinite snapshot retention. Copying snapshots to Amazon S3 or another AWS Region introduces significant operational overhead and development complexity compared to using the native Recycle Bin.