SAA-C03 Design High-Performing Architectures Practice Question
A media company serves video thumbnails from an Amazon S3 bucket in us-east-1 to viewers across Europe and Asia. The thumbnails are immutable after upload and are requested repeatedly by the same users. The company wants to reduce latency for the global audience and reduce data transfer costs, and it does not want to modify application code. Which solution meets these requirements with the LEAST operational effort?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse S3 Transfer Acceleration, which accelerates individual transfers to a bucket, with edge caching, which is what actually serves repeat reads quickly to a global audience.
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 origin, enable caching, and configure an origin access control.
CloudFront is the AWS content delivery network that caches objects at edge locations worldwide, so repeated thumbnail requests from Europe and Asia are served close to viewers instead of from us-east-1. Because the objects are immutable, cache hit ratios stay high, cutting origin fetches and S3 egress charges. Origin access control keeps the bucket private, and the application continues to use the distribution domain without code changes.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Replicate the bucket to eu-west-1 and ap-southeast-1 using S3 Cross-Region Replication, and have the application select the nearest bucket.
Why it's wrong here
Cross-Region Replication adds copies in other Regions, but the application would need logic to choose a Region and resolve the nearest bucket, which is a code change the company wants to avoid. Replication also stores and transfers duplicate data, increasing rather than reducing cost. It does not provide edge caching for viewers far from a replica Region.
- ✓
Create an Amazon CloudFront distribution with the S3 bucket as origin, enable caching, and configure an origin access control.
Why this is correct
CloudFront caches immutable thumbnails at edge locations close to European and Asian viewers, so repeat requests are served from the edge with lower latency and fewer origin fetches, which reduces S3 data transfer cost. Origin access control restricts direct bucket access while keeping the same object URLs behind the distribution. This requires no application code change and is the least-effort global acceleration option.
- ✗
Attach an S3 bucket policy that allows public read and place an Application Load Balancer in front of the bucket.
Why it's wrong here
An Application Load Balancer cannot proxy S3 object requests; its targets are EC2 instances, IP addresses, Lambda functions, and containers, not S3 buckets. Making the bucket public also violates least privilege and does not place content near users. This option neither caches thumbnails nor reduces global latency, and it introduces a security risk.
- ✗
Enable S3 Transfer Acceleration on the bucket and update the application to use the accelerated endpoint.
Why it's wrong here
S3 Transfer Acceleration speeds up uploads and downloads over long distances using edge locations, but it is designed for transfers to and from a single bucket endpoint and does not cache content at the edge. Repeated requests for the same objects still travel to the origin Region, so the latency and cost goals for a read-heavy global audience are not met. It also requires an endpoint change.
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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