SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company is migrating a legacy monolithic application to AWS. The application currently uses a shared filesystem for storing user-uploaded documents. The company wants to decouple storage and compute, ensure high durability, and minimize operational overhead. Which AWS service should the company use to replace the shared filesystem?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse shared filesystem requirements with network-attached storage (NAS) services like EFS or FSx, overlooking that object storage (S3) is the most durable, scalable, and operationally lightweight option for user-uploaded documents when compute and storage need to be decoupled.
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
✓
Amazon S3
Amazon S3 is the correct choice because it provides a highly durable (99.999999999% durability), scalable, and fully managed object storage service that decouples storage from compute. Unlike a shared filesystem, S3 allows multiple compute instances (e.g., EC2, Lambda) to access the same documents via HTTP/HTTPS APIs without needing a mounted filesystem, minimizing operational overhead. It also supports features like versioning, lifecycle policies, and cross-region replication, making it ideal for user-uploaded documents in a migration scenario.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Amazon EBS
Why it's wrong here
EBS is block storage and cannot be shared across multiple instances without additional configuration.
- ✗
Amazon EFS
Why it's wrong here
EFS is a file system but is not as cost-effective for large-scale object storage and may introduce unnecessary overhead.
- ✓
Amazon S3
Why this is correct
Amazon S3 provides scalable, durable object storage suitable for user-uploaded documents.
- ✗
Amazon FSx for Windows File Server
Why it's wrong here
FSx is for Windows environments and increases management overhead.
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 |
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