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AWS SAA-C03 Exam Question Walkthrough: Data Durability and Protection
Explore a key AWS SAA-C03 question about data durability and protection, ensuring you understand the right service for compliance and retention.
A financial services company needs to ensure that their application data is durable and protected against accidental deletions. They also want to comply with regulatory requirements for data retention. What is the best AWS service to meet these needs?
Options:
- A: Amazon S3 with versioning enabled
- B: Amazon EBS Snapshots
- C: AWS Backup for RDS
- D: Amazon Glacier for archival storage
Think before you scroll
This question focuses on data durability and protection against accidental deletions. The key aspects are data retention compliance and the ability to recover from accidental deletion. Weigh the options based on how they manage versions and protect data over time.
The answer
The correct answer is A: Amazon S3 with versioning enabled. This service provides data durability and protects against accidental deletions by maintaining multiple versions of objects, which is essential for regulatory compliance.
Why the other options lose
- B: Amazon EBS Snapshots: While EBS Snapshots provide data protection by taking point-in-time backups of EBS volumes, they do not offer versioning at the object level like S3. This limits their effectiveness for applications needing recovery from accidental deletions of individual files.
- C: AWS Backup for RDS: AWS Backup is a great service for automating backup tasks, particularly for databases. However, it is primarily focused on database recovery rather than object-level versioning or protecting application data from accidental deletions.
- D: Amazon Glacier for archival storage: Glacier is designed for long-term archival storage and is not suitable for active data retention needs. It is optimized for infrequent access, making it less ideal for scenarios where immediate data recovery is required.
The concept behind it
Understanding versioning is crucial when designing resilient architectures. Amazon S3 with versioning enabled allows you to maintain multiple versions of an object, ensuring you can recover from accidental deletions and meet data retention regulations. This principle applies to various data storage scenarios across AWS.
Exam trap to remember
Always remember: for durable data protection against accidental deletions, look for services with object versioning capabilities. This will save you in scenarios where compliance and recovery are critical.