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Difficulty: HardAWS Storage Services

A healthcare provider must retain historical patient medical images for 7 years to comply with regulatory standards. These files are rarely accessed (fewer than two times a year), but if a patient returns for an emergency follow-up, the images must be available for immediate viewing within milliseconds. The provider wants to minimize storage costs while meeting this response time SLA. Which Amazon S3 storage class is the most appropriate?

  1. A
    Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval
  2. B
    Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA)
  3. Amazon S3 Glacier Instant RetrievalAnswer
  4. D
    Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive

Answer

Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval
Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval is the most cost-effective storage class for archiving data that is accessed very rarely (such as once or twice a year) but still requires immediate access in milliseconds. It provides the same low latency and high throughput as Amazon S3 Standard, but at a significantly lower storage cost, matching the requirements of the hospital's emergency access SLA.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the access frequency and retention requirements.
The patient records are rarely accessed (fewer than two times a year) and must be retained for 7 years, indicating an archive storage class is appropriate.
Determining the access frequency helps eliminate hot storage tiers and guides selection toward archival tiers to minimize costs.
2
Evaluate the retrieval speed (latency) requirement.
The records must be accessible within milliseconds for emergency scenarios.
This millisecond requirement eliminates archive classes that require minutes or hours to retrieve data, such as S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval and S3 Glacier Deep Archive.
3
Compare the remaining options for cost-effectiveness based on access frequency.
Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval offers a lower storage price than Amazon S3 Standard-IA while meeting the millisecond retrieval requirement, making it the most cost-effective option for quarterly/semi-annual access patterns.
Comparing costs ensures the final selection satisfies the primary objective of minimizing storage fees.

Key Concept

AWS Storage Classes and Lifecycle Management
Estimated Time:2m 0s
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Topics

AWS Storage Services

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