Examkin

Question

Difficulty: HardManaging Storage and Data Transfer Costs

A media company runs a video processing application on Amazon EC2 instances distributed across 33 Availability Zones (`us-west-2a`, `us-west-2b`, and `us-west-2c`) in the `us-west-2` Region. The instances mount a shared Amazon EFS file system configured with the EFS Regional storage class and Elastic throughput mode. The total volume of active files stored on the EFS file system is 40 TB40\text{ TB}, and the application processes approximately 100 TB100\text{ TB} of data monthly.

The company's monthly AWS bill shows high storage costs for the EFS file system and significant data transfer charges for 66 TB66\text{ TB} of inter-Availability Zone traffic. A solutions architect investigates the configuration and discovers that:
- The EC2 instances are configured to mount the EFS file system using the specific IP address of the EFS mount target located in the `us-west-2a` subnet.
- Approximately 30 TB30\text{ TB} of the files stored on the EFS file system have not been accessed or modified in the last 3030 days but must remain available for immediate retrieval to meet compliance requirements.

Which combination of actions will optimize both the storage and data transfer costs for this architecture while maintaining high availability?

  1. Configure an EFS lifecycle policy to transition files to the EFS Infrequent Access (IA) storage class after 3030 days of inactivity. Update the EC2 instance mounting configuration to mount the EFS file system using the EFS DNS name instead of the specific mount target IP address.Answer
  2. B
    Recreate the EFS file system using the EFS One Zone storage class in the `us-west-2a` Availability Zone to reduce storage costs. Update the mounting scripts on the EC2 instances in all 33 Availability Zones to use the EFS DNS name.
  3. C
    Purchase Compute Savings Plans to cover the EFS storage and data transfer costs. Configure an AWS Lambda function to run daily to compress files older than 3030 days into zip format on the existing EFS file system.
  4. D
    Order an AWS Snowball Edge device to copy the 30 TB30\text{ TB} of inactive files from the EFS file system, ship the device to AWS to load the data into Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval, and configure an Amazon S3 Gateway VPC Endpoint in the VPC.

Answer

Configure an EFS lifecycle policy to transition files to the EFS Infrequent Access (IA) storage class after 3030 days of inactivity, and update the EC2 instance mounting configuration to mount the EFS file system using the EFS DNS name instead of the specific mount target IP address.
The correct option transitions infrequently accessed files to EFS Infrequent Access (IA) to reduce storage costs while maintaining immediate availability. It also changes the mounting scripts from a hardcoded IP address to the EFS DNS name, allowing Route 53 to resolve the DNS name to the local mount target IP address in the EC2 instance's Availability Zone. This keeps data transfer within the same Availability Zone and eliminates the cross-Availability Zone data transfer fees.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Configure an EFS lifecycle policy to transition files to the EFS IA storage class after 3030 days of inactivity.
Lowers storage costs for the 30 TB30\text{ TB} of infrequently accessed files while keeping them immediately available.
EFS IA offers significantly lower storage prices for files that are accessed less frequently but still require sub-millisecond access times when retrieved.
2
Update EC2 instance mount configuration to use the EFS DNS name instead of the specific IP address of the mount target in `us-west-2a`.
EC2 instances resolve the DNS name to the EFS mount target in their respective local Availability Zone.
Connecting to local mount targets avoids cross-Availability Zone data transfer, eliminating charges for the 66 TB66\text{ TB} of inter-AZ traffic.

Key Concept

Optimizing Amazon EFS storage using Lifecycle Policies and resolving cross-AZ data transfer costs by using DNS-based mount targets.
Estimated Time:3m 0s
Rate this question

Topics

Managing Storage and Data Transfer Costs