Question #1861
A company operates a web application on multiple Amazon EC2 instances that utilize an Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) for persistent storage. The company must replicate this data to a secondary AWS Region using an AWS managed service while minimizing costs. Which solution MOST effectively meets these requirements?
Configure EFS Cross-Region Replication to automatically synchronize the file system to another Region.
Schedule daily AWS DataSync tasks to transfer data from EFS to an Amazon S3 bucket, then enable S3 Cross-Region Replication.
Deploy a secondary VPC in the target Region, establish a VPC peering connection, and use a cron job to perform nightly scp transfers between Regions.
Implement AWS Backup with a daily backup rule configured to replicate backups to the secondary Region, then associate the EFS file system with the backup plan.
Explanation
The correct answer is D. AWS Backup provides a managed service to create daily backups of the EFS file system and replicate them to the secondary Region. This approach minimizes costs by leveraging incremental backups (only transferring changed data) and avoids the higher expenses of continuous cross-region replication (Option A) or multi-step processes involving DataSync and S3 (Option B). Option C is not fully managed and incurs operational overhead. AWS Backup meets the requirement of using an AWS-managed service while optimizing costs through efficient data transfer and storage.
Key Points:
- AWS Backup automates EFS backups and cross-region replication.
- Incremental backups reduce data transfer volume and costs.
- Managed service eliminates manual intervention (unlike Option C).
- Avoids complexities of multi-service workflows (Option B) or continuous replication costs (Option A).
Answer
The correct answer is: D