SAA-C03 Design Resilient Architectures Practice Question
A healthcare data platform stores patient documents in an Amazon S3 bucket in us-east-1. Regulations require that the data remain readable with low latency even if the entire us-east-1 Region becomes unavailable, and that writes continue in a secondary Region. The team wants object-level replication with minimal operational overhead and must preserve version history. Which solution BEST meets these requirements?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse S3 Transfer Acceleration or archival lifecycle rules with actual cross-Region data replication, which are unrelated features.
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) with versioning enabled on both buckets, and configure the application to read from the replica bucket during a regional failure.
Cross-Region Replication copies objects to a bucket in another Region and requires versioning on both buckets, which preserves version history. The replica bucket remains accessible if the primary Region fails, and writes can be directed there, meeting both the availability and data-durability goals with minimal operational effort.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Use S3 Transfer Acceleration on the existing bucket and rely on edge locations to serve reads during the outage.
Why it's wrong here
Transfer Acceleration speeds up uploads by routing through edge locations; it does not create a replica of the data. If the Region hosting the bucket is unavailable, the objects are unreachable, so this option cannot provide the required read availability.
- ✓
Enable S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) with versioning enabled on both buckets, and configure the application to read from the replica bucket during a regional failure.
Why this is correct
S3 CRR replicates objects asynchronously to a bucket in another Region and requires versioning on both source and destination, preserving version history. If us-east-1 becomes unavailable, the application can read from the replica bucket, and writes can be redirected there, satisfying the low-latency read and continued-write requirements.
- ✗
Enable S3 Same-Region Replication to a second bucket in us-east-1 and serve reads from that bucket during a regional failure.
Why it's wrong here
Same-Region Replication keeps both buckets in us-east-1, so a full regional outage takes out both the source and the replica. The data would be unavailable exactly when it is needed, so this does not meet the cross-Region availability requirement.
- ✗
Configure an S3 Lifecycle policy to transition objects to S3 Glacier Deep Archive in a second Region.
Why it's wrong here
Lifecycle transitions move objects to archival storage classes but do not create a cross-Region replica unless combined with replication. Glacier Deep Archive also has retrieval latencies of hours, which conflicts with the low-latency read requirement during a regional failure.
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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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
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