SAP-C02 Design for New Solutions Practice Question
A company needs to store application logs for at least one year with the ability to query them occasionally. The logs are generated at a rate of 10 GB per day. Which storage solution is MOST cost-effective?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often choose CloudWatch Logs (Option D) because it seems like the natural logging service, but they overlook the high cost of storing large volumes of log data for a year in CloudWatch Logs compared to S3 with lifecycle transitions.
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
✓
Stream logs to Amazon S3 using Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose, then use S3 Lifecycle policies to transition to S3 Standard-IA after 30 days.
Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose can stream logs directly to Amazon S3, and S3 Lifecycle policies allow automatic transition to S3 Standard-IA after 30 days, which reduces storage costs for infrequently accessed data while still allowing occasional queries. This combination meets the one-year retention requirement cost-effectively, as S3 Standard-IA has lower storage costs than S3 Standard for data accessed less frequently, and the lifecycle transition avoids 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.
- ✗
Store logs on Amazon EBS volumes attached to a single EC2 instance for querying.
Why it's wrong here
EBS is not designed for log archival and is costly for large volumes.
- ✓
Stream logs to Amazon S3 using Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose, then use S3 Lifecycle policies to transition to S3 Standard-IA after 30 days.
Why this is correct
S3 Standard-IA offers lower cost for infrequent access with retrieval available.
- ✗
Store logs in Amazon S3 Glacier and use S3 Select to query directly.
Why it's wrong here
Glacier has retrieval delays (minutes to hours) unsuitable for occasional queries.
- ✗
Stream logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs and set a retention policy of 365 days.
Why it's wrong here
CloudWatch Logs is more expensive than S3 for long-term storage.
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 SAP-C02 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 SAP-C02 exam.