Which AWS service provides object storage designed for 99.999999999 percent (11 nines) durability, storing data as objects within buckets and accessible over the internet through an API?
Easy · Choose one
Explanation
Answer: B. Amazon S3 is object storage. Data is stored as objects inside buckets, each object is addressed by a key, and access is through a web service API. Most S3 storage classes are designed for 99.999999999 percent durability by redundantly storing objects across multiple devices in a minimum of three Availability Zones.
A. Amazon EFS provides a shared file system using the NFS protocol. It presents a directory hierarchy rather than objects in buckets.
C. Amazon FSx provides fully managed third-party file systems such as Windows File Server and Lustre. These are file, not object, storage.
D. Amazon EBS provides block storage volumes attached to a single EC2 instance. It is not object storage and is not accessed through an object API.
12
Which AWS service provides persistent block storage volumes that are attached to Amazon EC2 instances and behave like raw, unformatted disks?
Easy · Choose one
Explanation
Answer: D. Amazon EBS provides block-level storage volumes that attach to EC2 instances. The operating system sees them as raw block devices that can be formatted with a file system, and the data persists independently of the instance lifecycle so it survives a stop and start.
A. Amazon EFS is a shared file system accessed over NFS. It provides file semantics, not block devices.
B. Amazon S3 is object storage accessed through an API. It cannot be mounted as a block device and formatted with a file system.
C. AWS Storage Gateway connects on-premises environments to AWS storage. It is a hybrid gateway, not native block storage for EC2.
13
A company must retain compliance records for ten years. The records are almost never accessed, and when they are, a retrieval time of up to 12 hours is acceptable. Which Amazon S3 storage class provides the lowest storage cost for this requirement?
Easy · Choose one
Explanation
Answer: B. S3 Glacier Deep Archive is the lowest-cost Amazon S3 storage class. It is designed for long-term retention of data accessed once or twice a year, with retrieval times measured in hours and a 180-day minimum storage duration, which fits a ten-year compliance archive that tolerates a 12-hour restore.
A. S3 One Zone-IA is cheaper than Standard-IA but still an infrequent-access class, not an archive class, and it stores data in only one Availability Zone, which is a poor fit for long-term compliance records.
C. S3 Standard-IA is for data accessed less frequently but that requires rapid access. Its storage price is far higher than the archive classes.
D. S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval delivers millisecond access, which the scenario does not need, and it therefore costs significantly more per gigabyte than Deep Archive.
14
Which AWS service provides a fully managed, elastic NFS file system that can be mounted concurrently by many Amazon EC2 Linux instances across multiple Availability Zones?
Easy · Choose one
Explanation
Answer: C. Amazon EFS is a fully managed, elastic file system that uses the NFS protocol. It can be mounted simultaneously by thousands of Linux EC2 instances, containers, and Lambda functions, is accessible from multiple Availability Zones, and grows and shrinks automatically as files are added and removed.
A. A standard EBS volume attaches to a single instance in a single Availability Zone and cannot be shared across Availability Zones.
B. S3 Glacier is an archival object storage tier. It cannot be mounted as a file system.
D. FSx for Windows File Server uses the SMB protocol and targets Windows workloads, not Linux NFS clients.
15
Which Amazon S3 feature keeps multiple variants of an object in the same bucket, so that a file can be recovered after it is accidentally overwritten or deleted?
Easy · Choose one
Explanation
Answer: D. S3 Versioning keeps every version of every object in a bucket. An overwrite creates a new version rather than replacing the old one, and a delete places a delete marker while the previous versions remain, so any earlier version can be restored. It is the standard protection against accidental overwrite and deletion.
A. S3 Transfer Acceleration speeds up long-distance uploads to a bucket by routing them through edge locations. It has no effect on data recovery.
B. Cross-Region Replication copies objects to a bucket in another Region. It protects against a Region-level event, but it also replicates overwrites and deletions unless versioning is enabled, so it is not by itself the recovery mechanism described.
C. A lifecycle configuration transitions objects between storage classes and expires them on a schedule. It manages cost and retention rather than preserving prior copies for recovery.
16
A company stores a large set of objects in Amazon S3 but cannot predict how often each object will be accessed, and the pattern changes over time. It wants to reduce storage cost automatically without operational overhead or retrieval charges. Which storage class should it use?
Intermediate · Choose one
Explanation
Answer: A. S3 Intelligent-Tiering automatically moves objects between access tiers based on observed access patterns, with no retrieval fees and no performance impact for the automatic tiers. It is designed exactly for data with unknown, changing, or unpredictable access patterns, in exchange for a small per-object monitoring and automation charge.
B. S3 Standard-IA charges a per-GB retrieval fee and has a 30-day minimum storage duration. If objects turn out to be accessed frequently, the retrieval charges can exceed any storage savings.
C. S3 One Zone-IA stores data in a single Availability Zone and also charges retrieval fees. It does not adapt to changing access patterns.
D. S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval requires objects to be restored before access, with retrieval times from minutes to hours. That is unsuitable for objects that may be needed immediately.
17
A company wants Amazon S3 to automatically move log objects to a cheaper storage class 30 days after creation and permanently delete them after seven years, with no application code changes. What should be configured?
Intermediate · Choose one
Explanation
Answer: A. An S3 Lifecycle configuration is a set of rules that define actions Amazon S3 applies to a group of objects. Transition actions move objects to another storage class after a defined age, and expiration actions delete them. This is a native bucket-level setting that requires no application or scripting changes.
B. Cross-Region Replication copies objects to a bucket in another Region for resilience or latency. It neither changes storage class over time nor deletes aged data.
C. Versioning preserves multiple variants of an object to protect against accidental overwrite and deletion. It does not transition or expire objects on a schedule by itself.
D. A custom scheduled script would work but adds code, permissions, and operational overhead that the built-in lifecycle feature already handles.
18
A company is migrating Windows applications that rely on SMB file shares, NTFS permissions, and Active Directory integration. Which AWS storage service should it use?
Intermediate · Choose one
Explanation
Answer: D. Amazon FSx for Windows File Server provides a fully managed native Microsoft Windows file system built on Windows Server. It supports the SMB protocol, NTFS access control lists, Distributed File System namespaces, and integration with AWS Directory Service or a self-managed Active Directory, which is precisely what these applications expect.
A. Amazon EBS attaches to one instance at a time and provides block storage, not a shared network file share for multiple Windows servers.
B. Amazon EFS uses NFS and is designed for Linux workloads. It does not natively provide SMB shares with NTFS permissions.
C. Amazon S3 is object storage. Windows applications that expect a mounted SMB share cannot use it directly.
19
A genomics research team runs high performance computing simulations that require a shared file system delivering sub-millisecond latency and hundreds of gigabytes per second of throughput, with the ability to link to data sets stored in Amazon S3. Which service should they use?
Intermediate · Choose one
Explanation
Answer: A. Amazon FSx for Lustre is a fully managed implementation of the Lustre parallel file system, purpose-built for compute-intensive workloads such as high performance computing, machine learning, and genomics. It provides sub-millisecond latency and very high throughput, and it can be linked to an Amazon S3 bucket so that objects appear as files.
B. FSx for Windows File Server targets Windows SMB workloads and does not provide a parallel HPC file system.
C. Accessing S3 objects directly over HTTPS gives high aggregate throughput but object semantics and higher per-request latency, which HPC simulation software expecting POSIX file access cannot use directly.
D. Amazon EFS is a general-purpose NFS file system. It is elastic and convenient but is not designed for the extreme parallel throughput HPC workloads require.
20
An on-premises application must continue writing to a local file share for low-latency access, while the data is durably stored in Amazon S3 so cloud analytics tools can use it. Which AWS service provides this hybrid capability?
Intermediate · Choose one
Explanation
Answer: B. AWS Storage Gateway is a hybrid cloud storage service. The file gateway presents an SMB or NFS share on premises, caches frequently accessed data locally for low-latency reads, and stores the data durably as objects in Amazon S3, where other AWS services can consume it.
A. Mounting EFS over the internet is not the intended access path, and it would provide no local cache, so every read would incur wide-area latency.
C. AWS DataSync is an online data transfer service that copies data between on-premises storage and AWS on a scheduled or one-time basis. It does not present an ongoing local cached file share.
D. Calling Amazon S3 directly would require rewriting the application to use the S3 API, and every read would cross the internet with no local cache, which fails the low-latency requirement.