SAA-C03 Design Resilient Architectures Practice Question
A company stores critical documents in an Amazon S3 bucket in the us-east-1 Region. The documents must survive an unlikely loss of the entire us-east-1 Region. The company wants a recovery point objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and a recovery time objective (RTO) of 1 hour. What should the solutions architect recommend?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse performance features such as Transfer Acceleration or storage-class transitions with actual cross-Region data replication.
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 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) from the us-east-1 bucket to a bucket in us-west-2 and enable S3 Versioning on both buckets.
S3 Cross-Region Replication copies objects to a bucket in a different Region, and versioning is a prerequisite. Replication is asynchronous but typically completes well within a 15-minute RPO, and the destination bucket can serve as the recovery source within the 1-hour RTO.
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 server access logging and store the logs in a separate bucket in us-east-1.
Why it's wrong here
Server access logging records requests to the bucket for auditing purposes. It does not copy object data to another Region and keeping the logs in the same Region provides no protection against a regional outage, so it fails the stated objectives.
- ✗
Configure an S3 Lifecycle rule to transition objects to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 30 days.
Why it's wrong here
Lifecycle transitions change the storage class of objects within the same bucket and Region. They do not replicate data to another Region, so a regional failure would still make the documents unavailable and would not satisfy the RPO or RTO.
- ✗
Enable S3 Transfer Acceleration on the us-east-1 bucket to speed up uploads from global clients.
Why it's wrong here
S3 Transfer Acceleration optimizes upload and download paths using edge locations, but it does not create a copy of the data in another Region. If us-east-1 is lost, the accelerated endpoint and the data in that Region are unavailable, so this does not meet the durability requirement.
- ✓
Enable S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) from the us-east-1 bucket to a bucket in us-west-2 and enable S3 Versioning on both buckets.
Why this is correct
S3 Cross-Region Replication asynchronously copies objects to a bucket in another Region, and versioning is required for replication. With typical replication times well under 15 minutes, this meets the RPO and provides a target bucket that can be used within the 1-hour RTO.
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
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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
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