Question 1hardmultiple choice
Full question →hardmultiple choiceObjective-mapped
A company stores video files in Amazon S3. Files are accessed frequently for the first 30 days, then weekly for the next 6 months, and then rarely after that. Files must be retained for 5 years and any access must be served within minutes. The SysOps administrator wants to minimize storage costs. Which lifecycle policy is most cost-effective?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Good practice is not just finding the correct option. The wrong answers often show the exact trap the exam wants you to fall into.
A
Best answer
Transition to S3 Standard-Infrequent Access after 30 days, then to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 6 months.
Standard-IA reduces cost for weekly access, and Glacier Deep Archive provides the lowest storage cost for rarely accessed data with retrieval in minutes (expedited) if needed.
B
Distractor review
Transition to S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access after 30 days, then to S3 Glacier after 6 months.
One Zone-IA has lower durability and is not recommended for long-term retention. S3 Glacier (Flexible Retrieval) has a higher retrieval cost than Deep Archive and slower retrieval (minutes to hours).
C
Distractor review
Transition to S3 Standard-Infrequent Access after 30 days, then to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval after 6 months.
Glacier Instant Retrieval is designed for data accessed once per quarter; it is more expensive than Deep Archive for data accessed rarely after 6 months.
D
Distractor review
Transition to S3 Intelligent-Tiering after 30 days, then to S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval after 6 months.
Intelligent-Tiering has monitoring and automation charges, and Glacier Flexible Retrieval is not the cheapest option for data that is accessed less than once a year.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: NAT rules depend on direction and matching traffic
NAT is not only about the public address. The inside/outside interface roles and the ACL or rule that matches traffic are just as important.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
NAT questions usually test address translation, overload/PAT behaviour, static mappings and whether the right traffic is being translated. Read the interface direction and address terms carefully.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
- PAT allows many inside hosts to share one public address using ports.
- Inside local and inside global describe the private and translated addresses.
- NAT ACLs identify traffic for translation, not always security filtering.
TExam Day Tips
- Identify inside and outside interfaces first.
- Check whether the scenario needs static NAT, dynamic NAT or PAT.
- Do not confuse NAT matching ACLs with normal packet-filtering intent.
Related practice questions
Related SOA-C02 practice-question pages
Use these pages to review the topic behind this question. This is how one missed question becomes focused revision.
More questions from this exam
Keep practising from the same exam bank, or move into a focused topic page if this question exposed a weak area.
Question 1
A company uses Amazon CloudFront to deliver content to a global audience. The origin is an Application Load Balancer in us-east-1. The SysOps administrator wants to reduce costs by minimizing the number of requests that reach the origin server. Which action should the administrator take?
Question 2
A company runs a batch processing application on Amazon EC2 that runs for 2 hours every night. The workload can tolerate interruptions. Which EC2 purchasing option provides the lowest cost for this use case?
Question 3
A SysOps administrator needs to monitor the CPU utilization of an Amazon RDS DB instance and receive an alarm when CPU utilization exceeds 80% for 5 consecutive minutes. Which AWS service should be used to create this alarm?
Question 4
A company runs a critical web application on Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application uses session stickiness (sticky sessions) to maintain user sessions. The SysOps administrator notices that when instances are replaced during a scale-in or failure event, users lose their session data. The administrator needs to preserve session data across instance failures without losing stickiness benefits. What should the administrator do?
Question 5
A company runs a production web application on a single Amazon EC2 instance. The application experiences a predictable and steady workload 24/7. The SysOps administrator wants to minimize compute costs for this instance while ensuring it remains available during the expected workload. Which EC2 purchasing option should the administrator use?
Question 6
A company has a VPC with public and private subnets. The private subnets host application servers that need to make outbound HTTPS connections to the internet. The SysOps administrator must implement a solution that provides outbound internet connectivity while preventing inbound connections from the internet. Additionally, the solution must allow the company to control which domains the application servers can access. Which solution should the administrator implement?
FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this SOA-C02 question test?
Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Transition to S3 Standard-Infrequent Access after 30 days, then to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 6 months. — The optimal strategy is to use S3 Standard for the first 30 days (frequent access), then transition to S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (Standard-IA) for the next 6 months (weekly access), and finally to S3 Glacier Deep Archive for the remaining 4+ years (rare access with retrieval within minutes). S3 Glacier Deep Archive is the lowest-cost storage class for long-term archival data that needs retrieval within minutes (standard retrieval time is 12 hours, but expedited can be minutes; however, for rarely accessed data, cost savings outweigh retrieval cost). One Zone-IA is less durable and not recommended for long-term retention. Glacier Instant Retrieval is more expensive than Deep Archive for rarely accessed data. Intelligent-Tiering could work but may not be as cost-effective given the predictable access pattern.
What should I do if I get this SOA-C02 question wrong?
Then try more questions from the same exam bank and focus on understanding why the wrong options are tempting.
Discussion
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