SAA-C03 Design High-Performing Architectures Practice Question

A media company serves a global audience from an Amazon S3 bucket in the us-east-1 Region. Users in Asia and Europe report high latency when downloading large video files directly from the bucket. The company wants to reduce download latency for these users without changing the application's bucket names or rewriting the application to use a different endpoint. Which solution should a solutions architect recommend?

⚠ Common exam trap

Watch out — candidates often confuse S3 Transfer Acceleration, which speeds transfers through edge routing but does not cache content, with CloudFront, which actually caches objects at the edge.

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

✓

Create an Amazon CloudFront distribution with the S3 bucket as the origin, and have users access the distribution domain name.

CloudFront caches S3 content at edge locations close to viewers, so global users download from a nearby edge rather than the us-east-1 origin. This lowers latency for large media files and requires no change to the bucket or application code beyond pointing clients at the distribution domain. Transfer Acceleration targets faster transfers but not edge caching, replication forces endpoint selection changes, and relocating the bucket favors only one region.

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

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

✓
Create an Amazon CloudFront distribution with the S3 bucket as the origin, and have users access the distribution domain name.
Why this is correct
CloudFront caches objects at edge locations worldwide, so users in Asia and Europe retrieve content from a nearby edge instead of the us-east-1 bucket. This dramatically reduces download latency for large files and repeated requests. It is the canonical AWS solution for global content delivery from S3, and the application can keep using the same bucket while clients simply use the CloudFront distribution domain, satisfying the no-rewrite constraint.
✗
Move the S3 bucket to a Region closer to the majority of users.
Why it's wrong here
Relocating the bucket to a single closer Region would help one user group while degrading another, since the audience is spread across Asia and Europe. It also requires migrating data and changing the bucket location, which conflicts with keeping the application unchanged. A single-Region bucket cannot serve a globally distributed audience with low latency as effectively as edge caching.
✗
Enable S3 Transfer Acceleration on the bucket and have clients use the accelerated endpoint.
Why it's wrong here
Transfer Acceleration speeds up uploads and downloads by routing traffic through AWS edge locations to the nearest Regional edge, but it is primarily designed to improve transfer speeds over long distances for uploads and is not the standard mechanism for global read caching. It does not cache objects at edge locations, so repeat downloads still traverse to the origin Region. It also requires clients to use a distinct accelerated endpoint, which conflicts with the requirement to avoid changing endpoints.
✗
Enable S3 Cross-Region Replication to buckets in Asia and Europe, and update the application to select the nearest bucket.
Why it's wrong here
Cross-Region Replication copies objects to buckets in other Regions, which can reduce latency if clients read from a nearby bucket, but it requires the application to know which bucket to use and to change endpoints, violating the no-rewrite requirement. Replication also incurs storage and request costs in every destination Region and is not a transparent latency solution. It duplicates data rather than caching at the edge.

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 High-Performing Architectures Practice Question

Why each option matters

Option-by-option breakdown

AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison

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