Q64 — AWS SAA-C03 Ch.15

Question 64 of 100 | ← Chapter 15

Q1164. A company is migrating a document management application to AWS. The application runs on Linux servers. The company will migrate the application to Amazon EC2 instances in an Auto Scaling group.The company stores 7 TiB of documents in a shared storage file system. An external relational database tracks the documents.Documents are stored once and can be retrieved multiple times for reference at any time. The company cannot modify the application during the migration.The storage solution must be highly available and must support scaling over time.Which solution will meet these requirements MOST cost-effectively?

Correct Answer: D. Create an Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS)file system with mount points in multiple Availability Zones.Use the EFS Standard-Infrequent Access (Standard-IA) storage class.Mount the NFS share on the EC2 instances in the Auto Scaling group.

Explanation

To determine the most cost-effective and suitable storage solution for the company's document management application migrating to AWS, let's analyze the requirements and evaluate each option:Key Requirements:High Availability: The storage solution must be resilient to failures. Scalability: The solution must support scaling over time as the document storage grows. Cost-Effectiveness: The solution should minimize costs while meeting the above requirements. No Application Modification: The application cannot be modified, so the storage must be compatible with the existing setup (Linux servers, NFS-like shared storage). 7 TiB of Documents: The solution must handle this storage volume efficiently. Infrequent Access with Retrieval: Documents are stored once and retrieved multiple times (read-heavy workload).Option Analysis:Option A: Deploy an EC2 instance with enhanced networking as a shared NFS storage system Pros:Provides NFS storage, which the application can use without modification.Cons:Single point of failure (the EC2 instance could go down, causing downtime). Manual scaling and management of the NFS server are required. Not highly available by default (would require additional setup like Multi-AZ or clustering, which increases complexity and cost).Not cost-effective for long-term storage due to the need for compute resources to run the NFS server. Conclusion: Not highly available or scalable enough for the requirements. Option B: Create an Amazon S3 bucket with S3 Standard-IA storage class and mount it on EC2 instances Pros:S3 is highly available, durable, and scalable.S3 Standard-IA is cost-effective for infrequently accessed data.Cons:S3 is not directly mountable as an NFS share (though tools like s3fs exist, they are not recommended for production due to performance and consistency issues).The application expects NFS-like shared storage, and S3 is an object store, which may not work seamlessly without application changes.Conclusion: Not compatible with the application's NFS requirement without modification. Option C: Deploy an SFTP server endpoint using AWS Transfer for SFTP and an S3 bucket Pros:Provides SFTP access to S3.Cons:The application expects NFS-like shared storage, not SFTP. This would require significant changes to the application (e.g., using SFTP clients instead of direct file system access). AWS Transfer for SFTP adds unnecessary complexity and cost for this use case. Conclusion: Not suitable due to application incompatibility. Option D: Create an Amazon EFS file system with mount points in multiple Availability Zones and use EFS Standard-IA storage classPros:Amazon EFS is a fully managed, highly available, and scalable NFS file system.Supports Multi-AZ deployments for high availability.EFS Standard-IA is cost-effective for infrequently accessed data (lower storage costs than EFS Standard, with a small retrieval fee).No application modification is needed (works seamlessly with Linux NFS clients).Scales automatically with demand.Cons:Slightly higher costs than S3 for storage, but this is offset by the NFS compatibility and ease of use. Conclusion: Best meets all requirements (high availability, scalability, cost-effectiveness, no application modification).Final Answer:D. Create an Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) file system with mount points in multiple Availability Zones. Use the EFS Standard-Infrequent Access (Standard-IA) storage class. Mount the NFS share on the EC2 instances in the Auto Scaling group.This solution provides the required high availability, scalability, and NFS compatibility without application modification, while being cost-effective for infrequently accessed data.The solution that will meet the requirements most cost-effectively is:D. Create an Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) file system with mount points in multiple Availability Zones. Use the EFS Standard-Infrequent Access (Standard-IA) storage class. Mount the NFS share on the EC2 instances in the Auto Scaling group.Amazon EFS: EFS provides a managed, scalable, and highly available file system that can be mounted on multiple EC2 instances across different Availability Zones, ensuring high availability. NFS Compatibility: EFS supports the NFS protocol, which means it can be integrated easily with existing applications without modification, meeting the requirement to migrate the application without changes. Standard-IA Storage Class: This class is suitable for files that are accessed less frequently, which aligns with the document management needs where documents are stored once and retrieved multiple times over time.This solution balances cost-effectiveness and scalability while ensuring high availability for the application.