SOA-C02 Networking and Content Delivery Practice Question
A company wants to provide low-latency access to static content (images, CSS) for global users. The content is stored in an S3 bucket. Which service should be used to cache content at edge locations?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse caching at edge locations (CloudFront) with acceleration of uploads (S3 Transfer Acceleration) or network routing optimization (Global Accelerator), leading candidates to pick a service that does not actually cache content.
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
✓
Amazon CloudFront
Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) that caches static content (e.g., images, CSS) at edge locations worldwide, providing low-latency access to global users. It integrates directly with S3 as an origin, allowing you to serve content from edge caches while reducing load on the S3 bucket. This makes CloudFront the correct choice for caching static content at edge locations.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Amazon ElastiCache
Why it's wrong here
ElastiCache is an in-memory caching service for databases and application state, not designed to serve static content over HTTP at edge locations. It sits within your VPC or alongside your application, requiring origin infrastructure and doesn't have a global network of edge locations to reduce latency for geographically distributed users. While it could cache data if you built a custom solution, it lacks CloudFront's integrated CDN features like edge termination, TLS, and direct integration with S3 for static content.
- ✓
Amazon CloudFront
Why this is correct
CloudFront is a global content delivery network that caches static content at edge locations worldwide, providing low latency and high transfer speeds to users by serving objects from the nearest edge. It integrates natively with S3 origins, supports HTTP/HTTPS, and automatically handles both static and dynamic content with customizable cache behavior. This directly meets the requirement for low latency access to static content.
- ✗
S3 Transfer Acceleration
Why it's wrong here
S3 Transfer Acceleration uses AWS edge locations to accelerate uploads to S3 over a fast network path, but it does not accelerate or cache downloads for end users. The service is used to speed up the transfer of objects into an S3 bucket, not to deliver content out to users at lower latency. Since the issue is low latency access to static content, not upload performance, this doesn't solve the problem.
- ✗
AWS Global Accelerator
Why it's wrong here
Global Accelerator uses anycast IP addresses at AWS edge locations to route traffic to your application endpoints, optimizing the network path and reducing packet loss, but it doesn't cache content. It improves network performance by directing traffic over the AWS global network, but every request still goes to your origin, so static content isn't served from edge caches. For static content that is frequently requested, a CDN like CloudFront is needed to cache and serve objects locally.
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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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.