SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is designing a data lake on AWS using Amazon S3. The data lake will store petabytes of data from various sources. The company needs to query the data using Amazon Athena and Amazon Redshift Spectrum. The data is highly compressed and stored in Parquet format. Which storage class should be used to minimize costs while maintaining immediate query performance?
⚠ Common exam trap
The SAP-C02 exam often tests the misconception that S3 Intelligent-Tiering is only for unpredictable access patterns, but the trap here is that candidates overlook its ability to maintain immediate query performance for Athena and Redshift Spectrum by keeping frequently accessed data in low-latency tiers, while still minimizing costs for cold data, making it superior to static storage classes for a large data lake with evolving access patterns.
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 Intelligent-Tiering
S3 Intelligent-Tiering is the correct choice because it automatically moves data between access tiers (frequent, infrequent, and archive instant retrieval) based on changing access patterns, ensuring that frequently queried data remains in low-latency tiers for immediate query performance with Athena and Redshift Spectrum, while reducing storage costs for data that becomes less active. This is ideal for a petabyte-scale data lake where access patterns are unpredictable or vary over time, as it avoids manual tier management and the retrieval delays of archive classes.
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 Standard
Why it's wrong here
Standard is costly for large volumes of data that may not be accessed frequently.
- ✗
S3 Glacier Deep Archive
Why it's wrong here
Glacier has retrieval times not suitable for querying.
- ✗
S3 One Zone-IA
Why it's wrong here
One Zone-IA lacks multi-AZ resilience.
- ✓
S3 Intelligent-Tiering
Why this is correct
Intelligent-Tiering optimizes cost automatically.
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
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