AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional — Question 630

A company is running a custom database in the AWS Cloud. The database uses Amazon EC2 for compute and uses Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) for storage. The database runs on the latest generation of EC2 instances and uses a General Purpose SSD (gp2) EBS volume for data.
The current data volume has the following characteristics:
✑ The volume is 512 GB in size.
✑ The volume never goes above 256 GB utilization.
✑ The volume consistently uses around 1,500 IOPS.
A solutions architect needs to conduct an analysis of the current database storage layer and make a recommendation about ways to reduce cost.
Which solution will provide the MOST cost savings without impacting the performance of the database?

Answer options

• A. Convert the data volume to the Cloud HDD (sc1) type. Leave the volume as 512 GB. Set the volume IOPS to 1,500.
• B. Convert the data volume to the Provisioned IOPS SSD (io2) type. Resize the volume to 256 GB. Set the volume IOPS to 1,500.
• C. Convert the data volume to the Provisioned IOPS SSD (io2) Block Express type. Leave the volume as 512 GB. Set the volume IOPS to 1,500.
• D. Convert the data volume to the General Purpose SSD (gp3) type. Resize the volume to 256 GB. Set the volume IOPS to 1,500.

Correct answer: D

Explanation

Converting the volume to gp3 and shrinking it to 256 GB delivers the greatest cost savings because gp3 is less expensive per GB than gp2 and automatically provides 3,000 IOPS at no extra charge, which easily covers the database's 1,500 IOPS requirement. Option A is incorrect because sc1 is a low-performance HDD type that cannot sustain the required IOPS. Options B and C are incorrect because io2 and io2 Block Express are premium provisioned IOPS volumes designed for extreme performance and are far more expensive than gp3.