SAA-C03 Design Resilient Architectures Practice Question
A ticket booking system stores uploaded documents in S3. The business requires a copy in another AWS Region for disaster recovery. What should be configured?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse S3 Cross-Region Replication with S3 lifecycle policies or other storage services like EBS snapshots, failing to recognize that CRR is the only option that directly creates a second copy of S3 objects in a different AWS Region for disaster recovery.
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
✓
S3 Cross-Region Replication with versioning enabled
S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) with versioning enabled automatically copies objects from a source bucket in one AWS Region to a destination bucket in another Region, meeting the disaster recovery requirement for a geographically separate copy. Versioning must be enabled on both buckets to support replication of all object versions, ensuring consistency and recoverability. This is the native S3 feature designed for cross-region data redundancy without custom scripting or third-party tools.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
S3 lifecycle transition to Glacier Flexible Retrieval
Why it's wrong here
An S3 lifecycle rule that transitions objects to Glacier Flexible Retrieval only changes the storage class of existing objects within the same bucket and geographic Region. It does not create a second copy in another Region, nor does it protect against regional loss or bucket deletion. While it lowers storage costs for archival data, it is not a disaster recovery mechanism and offers no replication or failover capability.
- ✗
An EBS snapshot schedule
Why it's wrong here
EBS snapshot schedules capture point-in-time backups of Amazon EBS volumes, not S3 objects. Although those snapshots are physically stored in S3 as private block-level images, they cannot be used to restore individual uploaded documents, and the schedule does not replicate S3 bucket content across Regions. Therefore, this option provides no disaster recovery benefit for the ticket booking system's S3-based document storage.
- ✓
S3 Cross-Region Replication with versioning enabled
Why this is correct
S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) asynchronously replicates every new object to a destination bucket in a different AWS Region, and it requires versioning to be enabled on both the source and destination buckets. This maintains a separate, durable copy of the uploaded documents that can be promoted to production during a regional outage, satisfying disaster recovery and compliance requirements. Replication is automatic, can be filtered by prefix or tags, and preserves object metadata and versions.
- ✗
A CloudFront distribution
Why it's wrong here
A CloudFront distribution places cached copies of S3 objects at edge locations for lower latency, but it is not a durable, independent copy of the data. CloudFront's cache expires based on configurable TTLs, and if the origin S3 bucket is lost or deleted, the edge caches are not a reliable source for recovery. Using CloudFront alone does not replicate data across Regions and therefore does not fulfill the requirement for disaster recovery.
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 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.