Question

Difficulty: EasyManaging Storage and Data Transfer Costs

A company runs a batch processing application on Amazon EC2 instances located in private subnets within a VPC in the `us-east-1` Region. The application downloads 15 TB15\text{ TB} of data monthly from an Amazon S3 bucket located in the same Region. Currently, all outbound traffic from the private subnets is routed through a NAT Gateway, which results in significant NAT Gateway data processing charges. The company wants to eliminate these data processing charges for the Amazon S3 traffic while maintaining the existing subnet architecture. Which network configuration change is the most cost-effective solution?

  1. Configure a VPC gateway endpoint for Amazon S3 and associate it with the route tables of the private subnets.Answer
  2. B
    Deploy an additional NAT Gateway in a second Availability Zone and update the route tables to distribute the Amazon S3 data transfer load.
  3. C
    Route all Amazon S3 traffic through an AWS Transit Gateway to a centralized VPC that hosts an Interface VPC endpoint for Amazon S3.
  4. D
    Purchase an EC2 Instance Savings Plan to cover the NAT Gateway data processing charges.

Answer

Configure a VPC gateway endpoint for Amazon S3 and associate it with the route tables of the private subnets.
Configuring a VPC gateway endpoint for Amazon S3 is the most cost-effective solution. Gateway endpoints are provided at no additional cost (no hourly or data processing charges) and allow instances in private subnets to securely connect to S3 within the same Region, completely bypassing the NAT Gateway and eliminating its data processing charges.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the source of the high cost.
The application downloads 15 TB15\text{ TB} of data from Amazon S3 through a NAT Gateway, which incurs data processing charges of $0.045\$0.045 per GB in the `us-east-1` Region.
Before optimizing, you must identify which component is generating the data processing charges.
2
Identify the most cost-effective private routing mechanism to Amazon S3.
A VPC gateway endpoint for Amazon S3 is a free routing destination that does not charge for data transfer or data processing.
Gateway endpoints allow private routing to S3 within the same Region without passing traffic through a NAT Gateway.
3
Configure the VPC route tables to utilize the gateway endpoint.
Traffic destined for S3 will bypass the NAT Gateway, eliminating the NAT Gateway data processing charges.
Updating the route tables ensures that traffic to S3 is directed to the gateway endpoint instead of the NAT Gateway.

Key Concept

Bypassing NAT Gateway data processing costs for Amazon S3 traffic by utilizing free VPC Gateway Endpoints.
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