A company stores a large amount of data that auditors access only twice each year. Which Amazon S3 storage class should the company use to store the data with the LOWEST cost?

Question

Options

• AAmazon S3 Outposts
• BAmazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval
• CAmazon S3 Standard
• DAmazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering

• A
  3% (1)
• B
  94% (33)
• D
  3% (1)

Explanation

S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval is designed for data accessed infrequently (roughly once per quarter) but still needs millisecond retrieval when accessed - making it the lowest-cost fit for twice-yearly auditor access. S3 Outposts (A) is for on-premises S3 deployments and isn't a cost-optimization tier. S3 Standard (C) is the highest-cost class, optimized for frequently accessed data, so it's wasteful here. S3 Intelligent-Tiering (D) automatically moves data between tiers but adds a monitoring fee per object, which adds unnecessary cost when the access pattern is already known and predictable.

Memory tip: Think of "Glacier" as cold storage - infrequent access, low cost. The "Instant Retrieval" variant is the sweet spot when you need low latency on rare occasions (audits, compliance checks). If retrieval speed didn't matter at all, Glacier Flexible Retrieval would be even cheaper - but exams often test whether you can distinguish instant vs. flexible based on latency requirements.

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