SAA-C03 Design Resilient Architectures Practice Question
A media streaming company stores high-value video assets in an Amazon S3 bucket. The company requires a resilient storage architecture that protects against accidental deletion, malicious overwrites, and zonal or regional outages. Which combinations of features should a Solutions Architect implement to achieve these requirements? (Choose TWO.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse S3 versioning with replication, or pick features like cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) which are unrelated to regional disaster recovery and data protection.
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
✓
Enable S3 Versioning on the bucket and configure MFA Delete to prevent accidental or malicious deletion of object versions.
Enabling S3 Versioning ensures that previous versions are retained when objects are deleted or overwritten, protecting against accidental data loss. Furthermore, replicating objects to another AWS Region using S3 Cross-Region Replication guarantees durability and availability against catastrophic regional disruptions, satisfying robust disaster recovery best practices for critical media assets.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Enable S3 Versioning on the bucket and configure MFA Delete to prevent accidental or malicious deletion of object versions.
Why this is correct
S3 Versioning preserves every version of every object, ensuring deleted or overwritten files can be easily restored. Multi-Factor Authentication Delete adds an extra layer of authorization security, requiring physical or virtual MFA tokens for permanent deletion operations.
- ✗
Configure Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering to automatically move infrequently accessed video assets to lower-cost storage tiers.
Why it's wrong here
S3 Intelligent-Tiering optimizes storage costs by moving objects between access tiers based on access patterns, but it does not provide data protection mechanisms against accidental deletion, malicious overwrites, or complete regional service interruptions.
- ✓
Implement S3 Cross-Region Replication to asynchronously copy all video assets to an S3 bucket in a different AWS Region.
Why this is correct
S3 Cross-Region Replication creates automated, low-latency asynchronous copies of data across geographically separated AWS Regions, ensuring high availability and business continuity in the event of a localized or widespread regional disaster affecting the primary bucket.
- ✗
Attach a resource-based bucket policy that explicitly denies all delete object requests from any IAM user except the root account.
Why it's wrong here
Denying delete requests via bucket policy prevents standard data maintenance and lifecycle operations, and relying solely on root account privileges violates AWS security best practices regarding least privilege access control for daily operational tasks.
- ✗
Enable S3 Object Lock in governance mode with a fixed retention period of 30 days for all uploaded video files.
Why it's wrong here
S3 Object Lock governance mode prevents users from changing or deleting object versions, but it can be bypassed by users with specific administrative permissions unless compliance mode is used, and it does not provide multi-region disaster recovery capabilities.
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 |
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every SAA-C03 question from scratch — 149 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Amazon Web Services exam blueprint
This SAA-C03 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 SAA-C03 exam.