AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional — Question 640

A multimedia company needs to deliver its video-on-demand (VOD) content to its subscribers in a cost-effective way. The video files range in size from 1-15 GB and are typically viewed frequently for the first 6 months after creation, and then access decreases considerably. The company requires all video files to remain immediately available for subscribers. There are now roughly 30,000 files, and the company anticipates doubling that number over time.
What is the MOST cost-effective solution for delivering the company's VOD content?

Answer options

• A. Store the video files in an Amazon S3 bucket using S3 Intelligent-Tiering. Use Amazon CloudFront to deliver the content with the S3 bucket as the origin.
• B. Use AWS Elemental MediaConvert and store the adaptive bitrate video files in Amazon S3. Configure an AWS Elemental MediaPackage endpoint to deliver the content from Amazon S3.
• C. Store the video files in Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) Standard. Enable EFS lifecycle management to move the video files to EFS Infrequent Access after 6 months. Create an Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling group behind an Elastic Load Balancer to deliver the content from Amazon EFS.
• D. Store the video files in Amazon S3 Standard. Create S3 Lifecycle rules to move the video files to S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) after 6 months and to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 1 year. Use Amazon CloudFront to deliver the content with the S3 bucket as the origin.

Correct answer: D

Explanation

Using Amazon S3 Standard combined with S3 Standard-IA via S3 Lifecycle rules aligns perfectly with the 6-month high-access window to significantly lower storage costs. Amazon CloudFront provides the most cost-effective and low-latency delivery mechanism for large VOD files by caching content closer to subscribers. Transitioning older, rarely accessed videos to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after one year ensures long-term archival costs are kept to an absolute minimum.