SAA-C03 Design Cost-Optimized Architectures Practice Question

A company stores 500 TB of archival data in Amazon S3. The data is accessed only once a year for compliance audits. The company wants the most cost-effective storage solution that still allows retrieval within 48 hours. Which S3 storage class should they use?

⚠ Common exam trap

The trap here is choosing S3 One Zone-IA or S3 Intelligent-Tiering because they sound cost-effective, but they are not optimized for data accessed only once a year with a 48-hour retrieval tolerance.

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 Glacier Deep Archive

S3 Glacier Deep Archive is the most cost-effective storage class for long-term retention of data that is rarely accessed and can tolerate retrieval times of 12 hours or more. The 48-hour retrieval requirement is satisfied, and the annual access pattern aligns with its design. Other classes either cost more or do not offer the same savings for archival data.

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

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S3 Intelligent-Tiering
Why it's wrong here
S3 Intelligent-Tiering automatically moves data between access tiers based on changing access patterns, but it charges a monitoring and automation fee per object. For data that is almost never accessed, this fee adds unnecessary cost. While it can be cost-effective for unpredictable access, here the access pattern is known to be once a year, making a direct archival class more economical.
✓
S3 Glacier Deep Archive
Why this is correct
S3 Glacier Deep Archive is the lowest-cost storage class, designed for data that is rarely accessed and can tolerate retrieval times of 12 hours or more. It meets the 48-hour retrieval requirement and is ideal for compliance archives. With 500 TB stored and only annual access, this class provides the greatest cost savings compared to other options.
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S3 Standard
Why it's wrong here
S3 Standard is designed for frequently accessed data and offers low latency and high throughput. It is the most expensive storage class for long-term archival because it lacks the cost benefits of infrequent access tiers. Given that the data is accessed only once a year, S3 Standard would incur unnecessarily high storage costs without providing any advantage for the retrieval time requirement.
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S3 One Zone-IA
Why it's wrong here
S3 One Zone-IA stores data in a single Availability Zone and is cheaper than S3 Standard-IA, but it is still more expensive than Glacier Deep Archive for long-term archival. It is designed for infrequently accessed data that can be regenerated if lost, and it does not provide the same durability or cost profile as archival classes. For compliance data that must be retained, it is not the most cost-effective.

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

SAA-C03 Design Cost-Optimized Architectures Practice Question

Why each option matters

Option-by-option breakdown

AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison

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