Question

Difficulty: MediumResilient and Highly Available Storage Infrastructure

A geographic information system (GIS) platform processes real-time satellite imagery using a fleet of Amazon EC2 instances launched in an Auto Scaling group across multiple Availability Zones. The instances require a highly available, shared file system that supports simultaneous read and write access with sub-millisecond latencies to coordinate mapping files. Additionally, the raw images must be backed up to a secondary AWS Region to comply with disaster recovery policies. The system must achieve a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 1515 minutes and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 1010 minutes.

Which combination of AWS storage configurations will meet these requirements? (Select TWO.)

  1. Configure an Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) file system to store the active mapping files, and mount it on the EC2 instances in each Availability Zone.Answer
  2. Store the raw images in an Amazon S3 bucket, and configure Cross-Region Replication (CRR) with S3 Replication Time Control (S3 RTC) enabled to the secondary Region.Answer
  3. C
    Attach an Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) gp3 volume with Multi-Attach enabled to the EC2 instances across the Availability Zones to serve as the shared file system.
  4. D
    Store the raw images in an Amazon S3 bucket, and configure an S3 Lifecycle policy to transition the backup data to S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval in the secondary Region.
  5. E
    Deploy a secondary Amazon RDS database instance in the secondary Region as a read replica, and configure it as the primary failover target for raw image storage.

Answer

Configuring an Amazon EFS file system to store active mapping files and storing raw images in an Amazon S3 bucket with Cross-Region Replication (CRR) and S3 Replication Time Control (S3 RTC) enabled.
The correct configurations combine Amazon EFS and Amazon S3 with Cross-Region Replication (CRR) and S3 Replication Time Control (S3 RTC). Amazon EFS provides a serverless, highly available shared network file system that supports concurrent read and write access for EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones with sub-millisecond latencies. Amazon S3 CRR with S3 RTC enabled replicates 99%99\% of objects to a secondary AWS Region within 1515 minutes, fulfilling the 1515-minute RPO. Because the replicated files are immediately readable in the destination bucket, the solution also easily meets the 1010-minute RTO.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the active shared file system requirements.
The file system must be accessible concurrently by multiple EC2 instances across different Availability Zones with low latency.
This identifies Amazon EFS as the correct solution because it is designed for multi-AZ, concurrent file system access, whereas EBS volumes are generally restricted to a single Availability Zone.
2
Analyze the disaster recovery replication requirements for raw images.
The backup must have an RPO of 1515 minutes and an RTO of 1010 minutes.
This establishes that replication must happen in near real-time and retrieval must be immediate.
3
Evaluate S3 Replication Time Control (S3 RTC) against the RPO.
S3 RTC guarantees replication of 99%99\% of objects within 1515 minutes, satisfying the RPO.
Standard Cross-Region Replication does not guarantee a replication window, making S3 RTC necessary to meet the strict SLA.
4
Evaluate the retrieval speed of the replica for the RTO.
Since S3 replicated data is immediately accessible as standard object storage in the destination Region, it satisfies the 1010-minute RTO.
This rules out S3 Glacier classes which introduce retrieval delays exceeding the RTO.

Key Concept

Designing highly available, multi-AZ shared file systems and cross-region replication configurations with tight RPO and RTO SLA bounds.
Estimated Time:2m 0s
Rate this question