DEA-C01 Data Store Management Practice Question
A company has an Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance with a large table that is frequently updated. The data engineer needs to reduce storage costs by archiving old records that are no longer accessed. The archived records must be retained for 7 years due to compliance requirements. Which solution is MOST cost-effective?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse 'archiving' with 'backup' or 'storage autoscaling,' failing to recognize that only moving data out of the RDS instance to a low-cost storage class like S3 Glacier Deep Archive actually reduces ongoing storage costs.
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
✓
Export old records using pg_dump and store in S3 Glacier Deep Archive.
Exporting old records via pg_dump and storing them in S3 Glacier Deep Archive provides the lowest-cost storage for data that must be retained for 7 years but is never accessed. S3 Glacier Deep Archive offers retrieval times of 12–48 hours at a storage cost of approximately $0.00099/GB/month, far cheaper than any RDS storage tier. This approach removes the archived data from the RDS instance, reducing provisioned storage costs while meeting compliance requirements.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Use RDS native backup and restore to keep a separate backup.
Why it's wrong here
RDS native backups capture the entire instance, so storage savings never materialise while the live table keeps growing; the old rows remain in the primary dataset. Backups suit point-in-time recovery or disaster recovery, not selective purging of aged records into cheap long-term retention.
- ✓
Export old records using pg_dump and store in S3 Glacier Deep Archive.
Why this is correct
pg_dump extracts the old records, and S3 Glacier Deep Archive provides the lowest-cost long-term retention tier suitable for seven-year compliance archiving. This removes the data from expensive RDS storage while preserving it durably and cheaply.
- ✗
Enable storage autoscaling on the RDS instance.
Why it's wrong here
Storage autoscaling only raises the allocated volume size when free space runs low, so it expands cost rather than reducing it; the aged rows stay in the table. It suits unpredictable growth in active data, not compliance archiving of records that should leave the instance.
- ✗
Move old records to a separate table in the same RDS instance.
Why it's wrong here
A separate table still resides on the same RDS volume, so provisioned storage and backup costs are unchanged; the frequently updated parent table keeps its bloat. Splitting tables suits query isolation or partition-style maintenance, not moving records to cheaper long-term storage.
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
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