SOA-C02 Reliability and Business Continuity Practice Question
A company uses AWS Backup to back up its Amazon EFS file systems. The SysOps administrator needs to ensure that backups are retained for 7 years to meet compliance requirements. What should the administrator do?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse backup frequency (how often backups are taken) with retention (how long backups are kept), leading them to select option C, or they mistakenly think cross-region backup (option D) automatically handles retention, when in fact both require a lifecycle policy to expire backups.
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
✓
Create a backup plan with a lifecycle policy that retains backups for 7 years.
AWS Backup allows you to define backup plans that include lifecycle policies to automatically transition backups to cold storage and expire them after a specified retention period. By setting the retention period to 7 years (2557 days) in the backup plan, AWS Backup will automatically manage the deletion of backups after that time, ensuring compliance without 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.
- ✓
Create a backup plan with a lifecycle policy that retains backups for 7 years.
Why this is correct
AWS Backup lifecycle policies let you specify a retention period, such as 7 years (2555 days), after which recovery points are automatically expired and deleted. This automated, policy-driven approach ensures backups are retained for the required duration without manual intervention and provides an auditable record of compliance. Setting the retention period in the backup plan is the definitive way to satisfy a 7-year retention mandate.
- ✗
Manually delete backups older than 7 years every month.
Why it's wrong here
Manually deleting backups older than 7 years every month is error-prone and not compliant because it depends on consistent human action and lacks an audit trail. An administrator might delete backups too early or miss the deletion window, leading to either data loss or extended retention that violates policy. AWS Backup does not track manual deletions as part of the lifecycle, so this approach cannot be reliably demonstrated to meet compliance requirements.
- ✗
Increase the backup frequency to daily.
Why it's wrong here
Increasing the backup frequency to daily creates more recovery points, but frequency and retention are independent dimensions in AWS Backup. The retention period is controlled by the lifecycle or expiration settings in the backup plan, not by how often backups are taken. Daily backups will simply generate more copies that still expire according to the existing retention policy, leaving the 7-year requirement unaddressed while raising storage costs.
- ✗
Configure cross-region backup to copy backups to another region.
Why it's wrong here
Configuring cross-region backup copies backups to a secondary region for disaster recovery, but it does not alter the retention period of the original or copied recovery points. In AWS Backup, copied backups inherit the retention settings defined in the source backup plan unless you explicitly override them with a separate lifecycle configuration. This option addresses geographic redundancy, not the duration for which backups are kept, so it fails to meet the 7-year retention requirement.
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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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SOA-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 SOA-C02 exam.