CLF-C02 Cloud Technology and Services Practice Question
A development team accidentally deletes important files from an Amazon S3 bucket. The company wants to protect against accidental deletions and overwrites in the future, allowing recovery of previous versions of objects. Which S3 feature should they enable?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse S3 Object Lock with versioning, thinking that locking objects prevents deletion entirely, but Object Lock only enforces retention periods and does not provide the ability to recover from accidental deletions or overwrites after they occur.
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
✓
S3 Versioning
S3 Versioning is the correct feature because it preserves every version of an object, including overwrites and deletions. When versioning is enabled, deleting an object only adds a delete marker, and previous versions remain recoverable. This directly addresses the requirement to protect against accidental deletions and overwrites by allowing restoration of earlier object versions.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
S3 Object Lock
Why it's wrong here
S3 Object Lock enforces a write-once-read-many (WORM) model, preventing objects from being deleted or overwritten for a fixed retention period or indefinitely via legal hold. It is designed for compliance and regulatory retention, not for undoing accidental deletions by team members. If a delete request is blocked, the object remains, but no historical before-delete copy is created; without versioning, deletion is simply prohibited rather than recoverable.
- ✗
S3 Cross-Region Replication
Why it's wrong here
S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) asynchronously copies objects to a destination bucket in another AWS Region to support geographic data redundancy and disaster recovery. It does not preserve a recovery point for source-bucket deletions: if an object is deleted in the source, the delete marker is replicated, and the original object is not automatically retained in the source. CRR requires versioning on both buckets, but replication itself is not a restore mechanism—it simply mirrors the current state, including deletions.
- ✓
S3 Versioning
Why this is correct
S3 Versioning preserves every version of every object, so when a team member issues a DELETE, S3 inserts a delete marker instead of purging the data and the prior versions remain intact. Overwriting an object writes a new version while retaining the previous one. To recover an accidentally deleted object, you remove the delete marker or promote an earlier version, which makes the object fully accessible again without deep backup infrastructure.
- ✗
S3 Intelligent-Tiering
Why it's wrong here
S3 Intelligent-Tiering is a storage class that monitors access patterns and automatically moves objects between frequent, infrequent, and archive-access tiers to optimise cost. It offers no version history or delete recovery; if a user deletes an object, the data is gone immediately and no previous state exists to restore. Its value is purely operational cost efficiency, not data resilience or accidental-delete protection.
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 |
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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.