A company is designing a new solution that uses Amazon S3 to store large amounts of archival data. The data must be retained for 7 years and then automatically deleted. Which S3 feature should they use?
Lifecycle policies can automatically delete objects after a set period.
Why this answer
S3 Lifecycle policies allow you to define rules that automatically expire objects after a specified period, such as 7 years. This directly meets the requirement to retain archival data for a fixed duration and then delete it without manual intervention.
Exam trap
The trap here is that candidates often confuse S3 Object Lock's retention period with automatic deletion, not realizing that Object Lock only prevents deletion during the retention window and requires a separate lifecycle rule to actually remove the objects afterward.
How to eliminate wrong answers
Option A is wrong because S3 Replication is used to copy objects across buckets for redundancy or compliance, not to manage retention or deletion based on time. Option B is wrong because S3 Versioning preserves multiple versions of an object and does not provide automatic deletion after a set period; it can actually increase storage costs if not combined with lifecycle rules. Option C is wrong because S3 Object Lock is designed to prevent object deletion or overwrites for a fixed retention period (compliance or governance mode), but it does not automatically delete objects after that period ends—it only prevents premature deletion, and objects remain until manually removed or a lifecycle rule is applied.