Question

Difficulty: MediumManaging Storage and Data Transfer Costs

A company runs a high-throughput transaction processing system on Amazon EC2 instances within private subnets in the `us-east-1` Region. The instances generate approximately 120 TB120\text{ TB} of raw application logs each month. These logs are uploaded immediately to an Amazon S3 bucket in `us-east-1` for near-real-time auditing. In compliance with regulatory requirements, the logs must also be replicated to a secondary S3 bucket in the `us-west-2` Region for long-term disaster recovery. The disaster recovery logs are rarely accessed but must be retained for 55 years. Currently, all outbound internet and S3 traffic from the private subnets routes through a pair of NAT Gateways, resulting in high monthly bills.

Which combination of actions will reduce the storage and data transfer costs for this architecture most effectively? (Select TWO.)

  1. Create an Amazon S3 Gateway VPC Endpoint in the VPC and associate it with the route tables of the private subnets.Answer
  2. Configure an Amazon S3 Lifecycle policy on the destination S3 bucket in `us-west-2` to transition the log files to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 3030 days.Answer
  3. C
    Provision an Amazon S3 Interface VPC Endpoint in the private subnets and configure the application to upload logs using the interface endpoint's private DNS name.
  4. D
    Enable Amazon S3 Replication Time Control (S3 RTC) on the replication rule and configure a lifecycle policy to transition the source logs to S3 Glacier Deep Archive immediately.
  5. E
    Establish an AWS Site-to-Site VPN tunnel between the VPC and `us-west-2` to route the cross-Region S3 replication traffic over the VPN.

Answer

The most cost-effective actions are to create an Amazon S3 Gateway VPC Endpoint in the VPC for same-Region uploads and to configure an Amazon S3 Lifecycle policy to transition logs to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 3030 days on the destination bucket.
Creating a Gateway VPC Endpoint enables the instances in private subnets to send 120 TB120\text{ TB} of data to the local S3 bucket directly and for free, bypassing the NAT Gateways and eliminating the per-GB data processing fees. Transitioning the disaster recovery logs in `us-west-2` to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 3030 days is the most cost-effective option for long-term storage because it aligns with the retention requirement of 55 years and the access pattern of being rarely accessed, resulting in maximum storage cost savings.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the current route for same-Region uploads to S3.
Uploading 120 TB120\text{ TB} of data via NAT Gateways results in significant charges because NAT Gateways charge a per-GB data processing fee ($0.045 per GB in `us-east-1`).
Identify data transfer and processing cost drivers in the existing configuration.
2
Determine the optimal VPC endpoint type for S3 traffic.
An Amazon S3 Gateway VPC Endpoint is selected because it is free of charge and does not incur hourly or data processing fees, unlike an S3 Interface VPC Endpoint.
Minimize NAT Gateway data processing charges for same-Region S3 traffic.
3
Evaluate S3 storage classes for the disaster recovery copy.
S3 Glacier Deep Archive is selected because it is the lowest-cost storage tier (0.00099perGBmonth)suitableforlogsthatarerarelyaccessedandmustbekeptfor0.00099 per GB-month) suitable for logs that are rarely accessed and must be kept for 5$ years.
Optimize long-term storage costs for compliance and disaster recovery data.

Key Concept

Combining Gateway VPC Endpoints to eliminate NAT Gateway processing costs with S3 Lifecycle policies to optimize long-term cross-Region storage costs.
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