Question #1504
A healthcare provider needs to archive historical medical imaging data in AWS. The provider aims to reduce storage costs significantly, as the data will almost never be accessed. However, in the rare event of a legal request, the data must be retrievable within five minutes. What is the MOST cost-effective storage solution?
Store the medical imaging data in Amazon S3 Glacier and use Expedited retrievals.
Store the medical imaging data in Amazon S3 Glacier and use Standard retrievals.
Store the medical imaging data in Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA).
Store the medical imaging data in Amazon S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA).
Explanation
The correct answer is A. Here's why:
- Option A: Amazon S3 Glacier is designed for long-term archival storage with the lowest storage costs. Expedited retrievals allow data to be restored in 1–5 minutes, meeting the legal retrieval requirement. While Expedited retrievals have higher retrieval costs, the rare access frequency minimizes overall expenses.
- Option B: Glacier Standard retrievals take 3–5 hours, violating the 5-minute retrieval requirement.
- Option C: S3 Standard-IA has higher storage costs than Glacier and is intended for infrequent (not archival) access, making it less cost-effective.
- Option D: S3 One Zone-IA is cheaper than Standard-IA but still more expensive than Glacier. It also lacks the redundancy of multi-AZ storage and does not optimize for archival use.
Key Points:
- Use S3 Glacier for archival data requiring minimal storage costs.
- Expedited retrievals ensure compliance with rapid access needs.
- Avoid IA classes (C/D) for rarely accessed archival data due to higher storage costs.
Answer
The correct answer is: A