DP-203 Design and implement data storage Practice Question
A data engineer is designing a solution to store historical sales data for a retail company. The data is append-only and accessed infrequently for compliance reports. The solution must minimize storage costs while allowing retrieval within 24 hours. Which storage tier should be used for the data?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to choose the Archive tier because it has the lowest storage cost, overlooking the rehydration latency and the fact that retrieval within 24 hours is not guaranteed with standard priority rehydration, especially under heavy demand.
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
✓
Cool tier
The Cool tier is the correct choice because it is optimized for data that is infrequently accessed and stored for at least 30 days, offering low storage costs with retrieval times in the range of seconds to hours, which meets the 24-hour retrieval requirement. The data is append-only and used for compliance, so the Cool tier balances cost and accessibility without the high retrieval costs or long rehydration delays of the Archive tier.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Hot tier
Why it's wrong here
The hot tier carries the highest per-gigabyte storage cost and is designed for data accessed frequently with low latency. This dataset is append-only and read infrequently for compliance, so hot storage wastes budget. Hot tier would be right for actively queried datasets needing immediate access.
- ✗
Archive tier
Why it's wrong here
Archive tier is the cheapest to store but rehydration can take hours and is billed at higher retrieval rates; the requirement is retrieval within 24 hours, which archive's variable rehydration times may breach. Archive suits long-term retention where multi-hour or day-long restore delays are acceptable.
- ✓
Cool tier
Why this is correct
Cool tier suits append-only data accessed infrequently, offering lower storage cost than hot while retaining millisecond access and a 30-day minimum retention. It satisfies the requirement to minimise storage costs while still permitting retrieval well within the 24-hour compliance window.
- ✗
Premium tier
Why it's wrong here
Premium tier uses high-performance SSD-backed storage, the most expensive option, intended for latency-sensitive workloads with high transaction rates. Compliance reporting on infrequently read historical data needs cheap capacity, not IOPS. Premium suits demanding interactive workloads, not archival retention.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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