AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate SAA-C03 Practice Test 85
Question 840
A compliance service reads old document packages unpredictably and needs millisecond access even though most documents are rarely requested. It wants archive-style storage economics without a restore job. Which class should it evaluate?
- Use Glacier Deep Archive while promising all retrievals complete in milliseconds without restores.
- Use Glacier Flexible Retrieval without restore initiation because its retrieval semantics are identical to hot S3 Standard.
- Keep every object in an EFS standard filesystem solely because it has an NFS API.
- Use S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval after comparing access, object-size and minimum-duration economics.
Explanation
Correct Answer
D:Instant Retrieval is an archive class designed for infrequently accessed objects that still require immediate access.
Incorrect Answers
A:Deep Archive requires retrieval preparation and does not match that latency.
B:Flexible Retrieval has restore workflows and differing retrieval speed/cost options.
C:An always-online POSIX filesystem is unnecessary if the application is already built around S3 object GET.
Question 841
A bucket holds quarterly reports that are downloaded frequently for a month and rarely thereafter. Storage metrics show a stable drop in accesses after 30 days, but no tier transitions are configured. What lifecycle action fits?
- Create eligible age-based S3 lifecycle transitions matching the measured cooling pattern and retrieval requirements.
- Transition every report immediately on creation to the coldest class regardless of first-month demand.
- Increase versioning retention as the primary mechanism to move old current versions into cheaper tiers.
- Use only a billing alert without any tier transition or manual optimization action.
Explanation
Correct Answer
A:Lifecycle transitions can lower storage cost after predictable access declines, subject to class minimum-duration and retrieval costs.
Incorrect Answers
B:High initial retrieval and restore needs may outweigh storage savings or break the application.
C:Versioning history alone does not automatically change storage classes.
D:An alert observes spending but does not implement the identified storage-placement savings.
Question 842
A temporary data export is used only during a seven-day audit and has no business or legal retention requirement afterward. The bucket has accumulated years of identical exports. Which storage optimization is directly appropriate?
- Retain every expired export forever because moving to IA always makes unused data cost zero.
- Apply a justified S3 lifecycle expiration rule that removes obsolete exports after their valid retention period.
- Increase the number of replicated copies of old exports without a recovery reason.
- Change the bucket's DNS name while leaving all data and lifecycle settings unchanged.
Explanation
Correct Answer
B:Deleting no-longer-needed objects avoids ongoing storage charges that class transitions alone would still incur.
Incorrect Answers
A:Infrequent-access classes still have ongoing storage and possibly minimum-duration charges.
C:Replicating additional copies of rarely used exports consumes more storage and potentially replication requests and transfer charges. Without a documented recovery or compliance requirement, multiplying those copies defeats storage cost optimization.
D:Object naming does not affect whether expired exports continue consuming storage.
Question 843
An S3 bucket has versioning enabled for customer artifacts. Current objects total 2 TB, but older noncurrent versions consume 150 TB because frequent overwrites have no retention limit. What should be reviewed?
- Delete all current versions while keeping every noncurrent version because customers should always read the oldest copy.
- Disable versioning and assume every already stored noncurrent version is retroactively deleted automatically.
- Apply noncurrent-version lifecycle transition/expiration policies aligned with recovery and compliance requirements.
- Add more CloudFront edge cache capacity as a substitute for cleaning noncurrent S3 object history.
Explanation
Correct Answer
C:Versioning retains superseded object versions separately; lifecycle management can control unnecessary historical growth.
Incorrect Answers
A:Removing current objects breaks normal access and does not reflect stated recovery policy.
B:Disabling versioning does not by itself erase existing historical versions.
D:A CDN cache cannot reclaim stored historical S3 versions.
Question 844
Large S3 uploads frequently fail midway. The application never sends CompleteMultipartUpload or AbortMultipartUpload, leaving unfinished parts billable indefinitely. Which lifecycle management feature helps?
- Use noncurrent-version expiration only and assume uncompleted multipart parts are complete versions.
- Enable S3 Transfer Acceleration and assume it retroactively deletes all unfinished multipart uploads.
- Add a bucket replication rule to duplicate incomplete multipart parts into a second Region.
- Configure expiration/abort of incomplete multipart uploads after an appropriate number of days.
Explanation
Correct Answer
D:Uncompleted multipart parts can accrue storage charges until completed or aborted; S3 lifecycle can clean them.
Incorrect Answers
A:Incomplete multipart uploads are a separate storage state from versioned completed objects.
B:S3 Transfer Acceleration optimizes eligible object transfer paths; it does not identify or remove incomplete multipart upload parts. A lifecycle rule with AbortIncompleteMultipartUpload can address abandoned part storage after an appropriate waiting period.
C:Replication of completed objects does not implement cleanup of abandoned uploads.
Question 845
A globally distributed application has legal requirements for a recoverable copy of selected customer documents in a second AWS Region. A cost review asks whether every object in the bucket needs CRR. What is the appropriate policy?
- Configure cross-Region replication only for the dataset and recovery objective that justify its storage, transfer and operation costs.
- Replicate every transient cache object to every Region because replication is free for all classes.
- Use same-Region replication alone and claim it protects against complete loss of the source Region.
- Disable all replication because S3's normal durability is identical to explicit cross-Region DR placement.
Explanation
Correct Answer
A:Regional DR copies are valuable for high-impact data but multiplying every low-value object may not be economically justified.
Incorrect Answers
B:Replication has storage and transfer/request cost components and is not universally required.
C:Same-Region copies do not provide a separate regional failure boundary.
D:S3 regional durability does not automatically satisfy a policy requiring a secondary Region.
Question 846
A regulated company needs separation between two S3 buckets owned by different security teams but has no requirement to survive failure of an entire AWS Region. What could avoid unnecessary cross-Region transfer?
- Use cross-Region replication by default because a second account can never exist in the same Region.
- Use supported same-Region S3 replication to a separately controlled bucket/account when the required isolation permits.
- Use a second bucket name without replication and assume writes to the first automatically appear in it.
- Use a CloudFront origin group as a permanent copy of all S3 object versions.
Explanation
Correct Answer
B:Same-Region replication can support account and bucket separation without adding cross-Region movement solely for geography.
Incorrect Answers
A:Accounts and bucket destinations can be separate within one Region.
C:Bucket creation does not replicate objects unless configured.
D:An origin failover/caching feature is not object replication into an independently controlled bucket.
Question 847
A media company replicates a 20-TB bucket for DR, but 90% consists of disposable transcode scratch files. The business only requires cross-Region copies of final masters. How should replication be scoped?
- Apply unconditional replication to every object because tag/prefix filters are unsupported for S3 replication.
- Remove the final-master objects from replication to prioritize temporary transcodes.
- Configure S3 replication rules filtered to the final-master prefixes or tags and test their selection coverage.
- Move the scratch files to a public bucket so they are automatically present in every Region.
Explanation
Correct Answer
C:Selective rules keep essential recovery objects while avoiding transfer and storage charges for regenerable scratch files.
Incorrect Answers
A:Replication can be scoped with appropriate rule filters.
B:The final-master media files are the business-critical objects that need recovery in the secondary Region. Prioritizing easily regenerated transcodes while excluding masters reverses the recovery requirement and risks losing the irreplaceable source.
D:Public access does not implement object replication or regional placement.
Question 848
A finance team compares two S3 cross-Region replication designs only by the primary bucket's monthly storage GiB. It ignores KMS permissions, copied object retention and inter-Region request/transfer charges. What is missing?
- Assume replicas consume no storage and no transfer because the source bucket is already durable.
- Model only CloudFront user requests and ignore actual object replication activity.
- Increase object retention indefinitely without accounting for the destination's accumulated bytes.
- Estimate full replica storage, data-transfer, request and applicable KMS encryption costs for the target retention policy.
Explanation
Correct Answer
D:A DR replica duplicates capacity and can incur regional transfer and encryption/API charges beyond the source bucket's footprint.
Incorrect Answers
A:Replication creates additional stored objects and performs operations in the destination.
B:CDN requests are not a substitute for S3 replication price dimensions.
C:Longer retention generally increases stored replica capacity and cost.
Question 849
A research consortium shares a large dataset in an S3 general-purpose bucket with authenticated analysts from other AWS accounts. It enables S3 Requester Pays so eligible requests and object downloads can be billed to the requesters. A budget review claims this change also eliminates the consortium’s ongoing S3 storage bill. Which billing interpretation is correct?
- The requesting account generally pays eligible request and download charges, while the bucket owner continues to pay for the stored data and applicable owner-side charges.
- Enabling Requester Pays transfers ownership of each object to whichever external account last downloaded it, so the original bucket owner no longer pays for storage.
- Creating separate S3 Access Points for analysts automatically assigns the underlying object-storage fees to those analysts regardless of who owns the bucket.
- Applying a requester-id cost-allocation tag to each object changes the legal payer for stored bytes to the tagged account without changing bucket ownership.
Explanation
Correct Answer
A:Requester Pays shifts supported request and data-download billing to authenticated requesters who acknowledge the charge; the bucket owner still pays S3 storage. The owner should also account for exceptions such as owner-billed retrieval or other applicable storage operations.
Incorrect Answers
B:Requester Pays is a charge-allocation setting, not an object ownership transfer. Downloading an object does not assign the bucket capacity and storage costs to the person who made that request.
C:S3 Access Points supply scoped network and resource access paths; they do not automatically alter responsibility for the underlying bucket’s object storage charges. The bucket owner retains the storage bill.
D:Cost allocation tags can help reports classify spend, but assigning a tag does not change which AWS account is billed for its stored objects. The Requester Pays feature has explicit supported charge categories.
Question 850
A scientific consortium changes its S3 bucket to Requester Pays. A third-party tool now receives 403 responses even though the caller can read objects, because it does not send the required requester billing acknowledgment. What should be evaluated?
- Widen the object's public-read policy as a workaround for missing requester billing acknowledgment.
- Verify client/API support for requester acknowledgment, requester account eligibility and compatible access patterns.
- Increase S3 object versioning frequency to prevent requester-charge errors.
- Change storage to Glacier Deep Archive because archive restores automatically remove all Requester Pays client constraints.
Explanation
Correct Answer
B:Requester Pays requires the caller to acknowledge associated charges; not every tool or access method automatically does so.
Incorrect Answers
A:Public authorization does not replace the billing acknowledgment and may expose data.
C:Versioning is unrelated to the request payer header/API parameter.
D:Archive class selection does not fix required request-payer semantics.