A regulator requires seven years of transaction logs to be retained. They are read at most twice a year during an audit, and the auditor is content to be told the files will be available the following working day. Which S3 storage class is cheapest while still meeting this?
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02), objective 3. Cloud technology and services medium
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The options
Correct S3 Glacier Deep Archive
Correct. It has the lowest storage price of any S3 class, its standard retrieval time is measured in hours rather than minutes — which the auditor has accepted — and its long minimum storage duration is irrelevant to data kept for seven years.
Not correct S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval
Wrong because it is not the cheapest. It retrieves in minutes to hours, which is faster than needed here, and you pay for that speed in a higher per-gigabyte storage price over seven years.
Not correct S3 Standard-Infrequent Access
Wrong. Standard-IA is priced for data read perhaps monthly that must come back instantly. Over seven years the storage premium over an archive class dwarfs any retrieval saving, and it charges per-gigabyte retrieval fees as well.
Not correct S3 Standard
Wrong. Standard is priced for data that is read often, with no retrieval fee. It is the most expensive possible home for data nobody reads.
Why
Order the classes by how often the data is read and how fast it must come back: Standard (frequently, instantly) → Intelligent-Tiering (nobody knows) → Standard-IA and One Zone-IA (about monthly, instantly) → Glacier Instant Retrieval (about quarterly, instantly) → Glacier Flexible Retrieval (minutes to hours) → Glacier Deep Archive (hours, cheapest storage). Every class below Standard adds a retrieval charge and a minimum storage duration, so the two questions to ask are always 'how often is it read' and 'how long may it take'.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- AWS exam guide task statement 3.6
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