SAA-C03 Design Resilient Architectures Practice Question
A team uses an S3 bucket to store important customer-generated exports. They need protection against accidental overwrites and also want copies of the data in another AWS Region for disaster recovery. Which S3 configuration best satisfies both requirements?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often think AWS Backup alone can handle both accidental overwrites and disaster recovery, but it does not provide continuous versioning protection or real-time cross-region replication, and disabling versioning removes the ability to recover from overwrites.
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 versioning and configure Cross-Region Replication to a destination bucket in another Region.
Enabling S3 versioning protects against accidental overwrites by preserving previous versions of objects, and configuring Cross-Region Replication (CRR) automatically replicates objects to a destination bucket in another AWS Region, providing disaster recovery. This combination meets both requirements without manual intervention.
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 lifecycle policies to automatically move objects to Glacier after 30 days only.
Why it's wrong here
Lifecycle transitions help with cost and retention, but they do not protect against overwrites or provide cross-Region copies.
- ✓
Enable S3 versioning and configure Cross-Region Replication to a destination bucket in another Region.
Why this is correct
Versioning preserves previous object states against overwrites and deletes, while replication provides an additional Region copy for recovery.
- ✗
Disable all versioning and rely on AWS Backup to restore objects from a scheduled backup window.
Why it's wrong here
Relying on backups may introduce recovery delays and does not give immediate protection from overwrites as versioning does.
- ✗
Enable S3 Block Public Access and SSE-S3 encryption, without using versioning or replication.
Why it's wrong here
Block Public Access and encryption improve security, but they do not address resilience to overwrites or Region-level failures.
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 by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SAA-C03 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the SAA-C03 exam.