AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional — Question 492

A financial company is building a system to generate monthly, immutable bank account statements for its users. Statements are stored in Amazon S3. Users should have immediate access to their monthly statements for up to 2 years. Some users access their statements frequently, whereas others rarely access their statements. The company's security and compliance policy requires that the statements be retained for at least 7 years.
What is the MOST cost-effective solution to meet the company's needs?

Answer options

• A. Create an S3 bucket with Object Lock disabled. Store statements in S3 Standard. Define an S3 Lifecycle policy to transition the data to S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) after 30 days. Define another S3 Lifecycle policy to move the data to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 2 years. Attach an S3 Glacier Vault Lock policy with deny delete permissions for archives less than 7 years old.
• B. Create an S3 bucket with versioning enabled. Store statements in S3 Intelligent-Tiering. Use same-Region replication to replicate objects to a backup S3 bucket. Define an S3 Lifecycle policy for the backup S3 bucket to move the data to S3 Glacier. Attach an S3 Glacier Vault Lock policy with deny delete permissions for archives less than 7 years old.
• C. Create an S3 bucket with Object Lock enabled. Store statements in S3 Intelligent-Tiering. Enable compliance mode with a default retention period of 2 years. Define an S3 Lifecycle policy to move the data to S3 Glacier after 2 years. Attach an S3 Glacier Vault Lock policy with deny delete permissions for archives less than 7 years old.
• D. Create an S3 bucket with versioning disabled. Store statements in S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA). Define an S3 Lifecycle policy to move the data to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 2 years. Attach an S3 Glacier Vault Lock policy with deny delete permissions for archives less than 7 years old.

Correct answer: C

Explanation

S3 Intelligent-Tiering is the most cost-effective choice for the first 2 years because it automatically optimizes storage costs for data with unpredictable or changing access patterns without operational overhead or retrieval fees. Enabling S3 Object Lock in compliance mode guarantees that the statements remain immutable as required by the financial company. Transitioning the data to S3 Glacier after 2 years and securing it with an S3 Glacier Vault Lock policy ensures the mandatory 7-year compliance retention requirement is met at a very low cost.