SAA-C03 Design Cost-Optimized Architectures Practice Question
A company hosts a public-facing static website and a set of downloadable software packages. Users are distributed globally, and the packages are large, so the company wants to reduce data transfer costs and improve download latency. The content changes only when a new release is published, a few times per month. Which solution should a solutions architect recommend?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse S3 Transfer Acceleration with content delivery; acceleration optimizes the transfer path to a bucket, while a CDN caches content near the user and reduces origin egress.
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
✓
Store the content in Amazon S3 and distribute it through an Amazon CloudFront distribution with a cache policy that sets a long time-to-live.
For globally distributed, cacheable static content, a CDN is the standard cost and latency optimization. CloudFront caches objects at edge locations, so most requests are served without touching the S3 origin, and the edge data transfer rate is lower than direct S3 internet transfer. A long time-to-live is appropriate because the content changes only a few times per month.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Store the content in Amazon S3 and distribute it through an Amazon CloudFront distribution with a cache policy that sets a long time-to-live.
Why this is correct
CloudFront caches objects at edge locations close to users, which lowers download latency and reduces the volume of data transferred from the S3 origin. Because the content changes only a few times per month, a long cache time-to-live means the vast majority of requests are served from the edge at the lower CloudFront data transfer rate, cutting both latency and cost.
- ✗
Replicate the S3 bucket to every AWS Region and return Region-specific URLs to users.
Why it's wrong here
Cross-Region Replication copies objects to other Regions, but clients still download directly from S3 in the nearest Region rather than from an edge location, so latency is not minimized for the last mile. Replication also incurs request and data transfer charges for every object copied and requires managing multiple endpoints, adding cost and complexity.
- ✗
Move the content to Amazon EFS and mount the file system from EC2 instances in each Region.
Why it's wrong here
Amazon EFS is a file system for Linux workloads within a Region and is not designed to serve public downloads directly to end users. Running EC2 instances in each Region to mount and serve the file system introduces always-on compute and cross-Region data transfer costs, which is far more expensive than a CDN caching static objects.
- ✗
Serve the website and packages from an Amazon S3 bucket in the primary Region and enable S3 Transfer Acceleration.
Why it's wrong here
S3 Transfer Acceleration speeds up uploads and downloads to a bucket by routing through edge locations, but it carries an additional per-gigabyte charge and is designed mainly for accelerating transfers to a single bucket endpoint. For globally distributed read-heavy downloads, a CDN caches content at the edge and reduces origin data transfer more cost-effectively.
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
Related to this question
About these practice questions
One of 935 original SAA-C03 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. 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.