DOP-C02 Resilient Cloud Solutions Practice Question
A company is deploying a stateful application on Amazon EKS. The application requires persistent storage that can be reattached to a new pod if the original pod fails. The cluster spans multiple Availability Zones. Which storage solution provides the BEST resilience and meets these requirements?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently assume EBS is the default persistent storage for Kubernetes because of its common use with single-node stateful workloads, but they overlook the multi-AZ requirement that makes EBS unsuitable due to its zonal scope, while EFS's regional nature provides the necessary cross-AZ resilience.
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
✓
Amazon EFS file system.
Amazon EFS provides a fully managed, regional NFS file system that can be mounted concurrently by multiple pods across different Availability Zones. It is designed for high availability and durability, automatically replicating data across multiple AZs, and supports automatic reattachment to a new pod if the original pod fails, making it the best choice for stateful applications requiring resilient, shared persistent storage on Amazon EKS.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Amazon S3 bucket with a mountpoint.
Why it's wrong here
Mounting an S3 bucket via a mountpoint (e.g., S3FS or the AWS Mountpoint for S3) does not provide a true POSIX file system. S3 is object storage with eventual consistency, lacking support for file locking, atomic rename, append operations, and other semantics required by stateful applications. While it can serve as a shared, durable store for static files, it is unsuitable for databases or workloads that demand strong consistency and real file system behavior.
- ✗
Amazon EBS with gp3 volume type.
Why it's wrong here
Amazon EBS gp3 volumes are block-level storage but are fundamentally tied to a single Availability Zone. A volume can only be attached to an EC2 instance in the same AZ; if a pod is rescheduled to a node in a different AZ, the EBS volume cannot be reattached without creating a snapshot and restoring it, which is disruptive and slow. This AZ constraint makes EBS a poor choice for multi-AZ EKS clusters where pods may land on any node.
- ✗
EC2 instance store volumes.
Why it's wrong here
EC2 Instance Store volumes are ephemeral, physically attached to the host instance, and their data is lost if the instance is stopped, terminated, or if the underlying hardware fails. In a pod environment, if the pod restarts on a different node or the node is replaced, all state stored locally disappears. Instance Store therefore provides no durability or persistence for stateful workloads.
- ✓
Amazon EFS file system.
Why this is correct
Amazon EFS is a regional, elastic, fully managed NFS file system that is accessible from all Availability Zones in the region. It supports the ReadWriteMany access mode, allowing multiple pods across different nodes and AZs to share the same file system simultaneously. EFS integrates with the EKS CSI driver and provides strong consistency and durability, making it an ideal persistent storage solution for stateful applications deployed on EKS.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DOP-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 DOP-C02 exam.