CLF-C02 Cloud Technology and Services Practice Question
A company needs to transfer petabytes of data from an on-premises data center to Amazon S3. The network connection is too slow for online transfer and the data must arrive within two weeks. Which AWS service is most appropriate?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to choose AWS DataSync or S3 Transfer Acceleration because they focus on 'fast transfer' without recognizing that physical shipment is the only viable method when the network is too slow for petabyte-scale data within a strict deadline.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
AWS Snowball Edge
AWS Snowball Edge is the most appropriate service because it provides physical storage devices that can be shipped to the on-premises data center, allowing petabyte-scale data to be loaded locally and shipped back to AWS, bypassing slow network connections entirely. This meets the two-week deadline since network transfer would be infeasible at that scale over a slow link.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
AWS DataSync
Why it's wrong here
AWS DataSync is an online data transfer service that uses an agent to copy data over your existing network connection. For a multi-petabyte dataset on a constrained link, the transfer would take an extremely long time, and DataSync still consumes the same limited network bandwidth, making it impractical for bulk offline migrations.
- ✗
AWS Direct Connect
Why it's wrong here
AWS Direct Connect establishes a dedicated private network link from your on-premises data center to AWS, but it remains a network transfer and does not bypass bandwidth or time constraints. Provisioning the circuit can take weeks, and even a 10 Gbps connection would require many days or weeks to move petabytes, so it is not the optimal offline, physical approach.
- ✓
AWS Snowball Edge
Why this is correct
AWS Snowball Edge is the correct service because it ships rugged, physical storage devices to your site, where you load data locally and return them to AWS, bypassing the network entirely. Each Snowball Edge device provides large capacity, and multiple devices can be used in parallel to achieve petabyte-scale migration over a constrained connection.
- ✗
Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration
Why it's wrong here
Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration uses AWS edge locations and optimized network paths to speed up uploads over the internet, but it still depends on the last-mile bandwidth from your on-premises environment. With a constrained connection, any acceleration is marginal, and moving petabytes would take far too long, making it unsuitable for this migration.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
Go deeper
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CLF-C02 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the CLF-C02 exam.