A healthcare provider runs a radiology application that uploads medical imaging files and … — AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate

A healthcare provider runs a radiology application that uploads medical imaging files and associated metadata to Amazon S3. The daily data patterns are as follows:

* High-resolution MRI scans (average size $350\text{ MB}$ ) are accessed frequently by radiologists for the first $45\text{ days}$ . After $45\text{ days}$ , the scans are rarely accessed but must be retained for $5\text{ years}$ to comply with local regulations. The retrieval time for these files must not exceed $5\text{ hours}$ .
* Scan metadata reports (average size $8\text{ KB}$ ) are queried frequently for the first $10\text{ days}$ to generate analytics. After $10\text{ days}$ , these reports are no longer needed and should be deleted.

Which combination of Amazon S3 Lifecycle configurations will meet these requirements in the most cost-effective manner? (Select TWO.)

Configure a lifecycle rule to transition the MRI scans to S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval 45 days after creation.Answer
B
Configure a lifecycle rule to transition the metadata reports to S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) 5 days after creation, and expire them after 10 days.
Configure a lifecycle rule to expire the metadata reports 10 days after creation.Answer
D
Configure a lifecycle rule to transition the MRI scans to S3 Glacier Deep Archive 45 days after creation.
E
Configure a lifecycle rule to transition the metadata reports to S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA) 7 days after creation, and expire them after 10 days.

Answer

Configure a lifecycle rule to transition the MRI scans to S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval 45 days after creation, and configure a lifecycle rule to expire the metadata files 10 days after creation without transitioning them to another tier.

Transitioning the MRI scans to S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval after 45 days is highly cost-effective and meets the 5-hour retrieval time SLA because standard retrieval takes 3-5 hours. For the metadata reports, keeping them in S3 Standard and directly expiring them after 10 days avoids the minimum storage duration (30 days) and minimum billing size (128 KB) penalties associated with transitioning small files to S3 Standard-IA or S3 One Zone-IA.

Step-by-Step Solution

Analyze the metadata reports' storage requirements.

The files are very small (

8\text{ KB}

) and have a short lifespan (

10\text{ days}

Knowing the size and lifespan allows us to evaluate if transitioning them to S3 Standard-IA or S3 One Zone-IA is cost-effective, considering their

128\text{ KB}

minimum storage size and

30\text{ day}

minimum duration rules.

Analyze the MRI scans' storage requirements and SLAs.

The scans are large (

350\text{ MB}

) and accessed frequently for

45\text{ days}

, after which they are rarely accessed for

5\text{ years}

with a retrieval time SLA of

5\text{ hours}

This determines which cold tier is suitable. S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval has standard retrieval of

3\text{--}5\text{ hours}

and is cheaper than Standard or IA for long-term archival, whereas S3 Glacier Deep Archive takes up to

12\text{ hours}

Formulate the optimal S3 Lifecycle rules based on these constraints.

Transition the MRI scans to S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval after

45\text{ days}

, and expire the metadata reports directly from S3 Standard after

10\text{ days}

This combination avoids early deletion penalties and minimum billing size charges for the small metadata files, while choosing the lowest cost archive tier that meets the retrieval SLA for the MRI scans.

Key Concept

Cost-optimized storage tiering requires matching data access patterns, file sizes, and retention needs with S3 storage class features, specifically respecting minimum storage durations (30 days for S3 Standard-IA and S3 One Zone-IA) and minimum object sizes (128 KB for IA classes).

Question

Answer

Step-by-Step Solution

Key Concept

Common Mistakes

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