SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question

A company needs to design a new solution for storing and retrieving user-uploaded images. The images are accessed frequently for the first 30 days and then rarely accessed after that. The company wants to minimize storage costs while maintaining low-latency access for frequently accessed images. Which storage strategy should be used?

⚠ Common exam trap

Candidates often choose Option D (all S3 Standard) because it guarantees low-latency access, overlooking the cost savings of transitioning to Standard-IA for data that becomes rarely accessed after 30 days.

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

✓

Store images in Amazon S3 Standard and use lifecycle policies to transition to S3 Standard-IA after 30 days.

Amazon S3 Standard provides low-latency access for frequently accessed images, and S3 lifecycle policies allow automatic transition to S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (Standard-IA) after 30 days, reducing storage costs while maintaining rapid access for the initial period. This strategy directly meets the requirement of minimizing costs without sacrificing performance for the first 30 days.

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

✗
Store images in Amazon EBS volumes attached to a web server.
Why it's wrong here
EBS volumes attach to a single EC2 instance in one Availability Zone, giving no shared, durable, internet-scale object store for user uploads. EBS suits a database or filesystem on one server, not multi-user image retrieval.
✓
Store images in Amazon S3 Standard and use lifecycle policies to transition to S3 Standard-IA after 30 days.
Why this is correct
S3 Standard serves the first 30 days at low latency, then a lifecycle rule transitions objects to S3 Standard-IA, whose lower storage price suits rarely accessed data while retaining millisecond access. This minimises cost without sacrificing performance for frequent reads.
✗
Store all images in Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval.
Why it's wrong here
Glacier Flexible Retrieval returns archived objects only after minutes-to-hours retrieval, so the first 30 days of frequent access lose the required low latency. It suits long-term archives where retrieval delay is acceptable, not a workload needing immediate reads during its hot phase.
✗
Store all images in Amazon S3 Standard.
Why it's wrong here
S3 Standard charges the highest per-gigabyte rate for the entire object lifetime, so the rarely accessed months after day 30 still incur full price, defeating the cost-minimisation requirement. It would be correct only if objects stayed hot indefinitely.

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

SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question

Why each option matters

Option-by-option breakdown

AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison

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