Question #1262
A financial institution stores transaction records in an Amazon S3 bucket, which is configured with read-only access for all regional branches. Each branch operates legacy, file-based systems on-premises and requires real-time access to the transaction data with minimal delay. What should a solutions architect suggest to fulfill these requirements?
Deploy an AWS Storage Gateway file gateway as a virtual machine (VM) on premises at each branch.
Migrate the files to each branch\u2019s on-premises systems using AWS DataSync for real-time processing.
Deploy an AWS Storage Gateway volume gateway as a virtual machine (VM) on premises at each branch.
Mount an Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) file system directly to each branch\u2019s on-premises servers.
Explanation
The correct answer is A. Here's why:
- Option A: Storage Gateway file gateway exposes S3 as a file share (NFS/SMB), allowing legacy systems to access transaction data as files. It caches frequently accessed data locally, ensuring minimal latency for real-time access. This aligns with the requirement for read-only, file-based access.
- Option B: AWS DataSync is designed for bulk data transfers, not real-time access. It would require periodic synchronization, introducing delays inconsistent with the requirement.
- Option C: Volume Gateway provides block storage (iSCSI), which is unsuitable for file-based legacy systems. It focuses on creating EBS-like volumes, not file shares.
- Option D: Mounting EFS on-premises requires a VPN/Direct Connect and is optimized for EC2. It does not directly expose S3 data and introduces latency without dedicated network infrastructure.
Key Points:
- Use Storage Gateway file gateway for S3-to-file protocol translation with caching.
- Avoid solutions requiring data migration (DataSync) or block storage (Volume Gateway).
- EFS is not ideal for S3-backed on-premises access.
Answer
The correct answer is: A