AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate Storage Services Syllabus

Storage Services syllabus — full chapter and topic list

Expand any chapter to see its topics and sub-topics. This is the whole examinable outline for Storage Services in AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate, not a summary of it.

1. 1

   Amazon S3 Object Storage

   6 topics

   • Buckets, objects, keys and durability model
   • S3 storage classes
     • Standard, Standard-IA and One Zone-IA
     • Glacier Instant, Flexible Retrieval and Deep Archive
     • S3 Intelligent-Tiering
   • Lifecycle policies and object expiration
   • Versioning, replication and MFA Delete
     • Cross-Region and Same-Region Replication
   • S3 security and access control
     • Bucket policies, ACLs and Block Public Access
     • Presigned URLs and access points
   • S3 performance, Transfer Acceleration and multipart upload
2. 2

   Block & File Storage

   4 topics

   • Amazon EBS
     • gp3, gp2, io1/io2, st1 and sc1 volume types
     • Snapshots, encryption and volume resizing
     • Multi-Attach and fast snapshot restore
   • EC2 Instance Store ephemeral volumes
   • Amazon EFS
     • Performance and throughput modes
     • Lifecycle management and EFS-IA
   • Amazon FSx family
     • FSx for Windows File Server
     • FSx for Lustre, NetApp ONTAP and OpenZFS
3. 3

   Hybrid, Migration & Data Transfer

   4 topics

   • AWS Storage Gateway
     • File, Volume and Tape Gateway
   • AWS DataSync for online transfer
   • AWS Snow Family
     • Snowball Edge and Snowmobile
   • AWS Backup centralized backup management

Storage Services flashcards for AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate

19 of 50 cards from the Storage Services deck — real questions with worked answers.

1. In Amazon S3, what are the three core components that define how data is stored and identified?

   Buckets (globally unique named containers), objects (the files plus metadata, up to 5 TB each), and keys (the full unique name/path of an object within a bucket that acts as its identifier).

2. What durability and availability does the Amazon S3 Standard storage class provide?

   99.999999999% (11 nines) durability and 99.99% availability, with data redundantly stored across a minimum of 3 Availability Zones.

3. What is the maximum size of a single S3 object, and at what size does AWS recommend using multipart upload?

   Maximum object size is 5 TB. The largest single PUT is 5 GB; AWS recommends multipart upload for objects larger than 100 MB and requires it above 5 GB.

4. List the S3 storage classes ordered from highest to lowest typical storage cost (frequent to archive).

   S3 Standard, S3 Intelligent-Tiering, S3 Standard-IA, S3 One Zone-IA, S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval, S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval, S3 Glacier Deep Archive.

5. How does S3 One Zone-IA differ from S3 Standard-IA in durability and AZ storage?

   One Zone-IA stores data in a single Availability Zone (so data is lost if that AZ is destroyed) and costs ~20% less than Standard-IA, while still maintaining 11 nines durability within that one AZ. Standard-IA spans 3+ AZs.

6. What does S3 Intelligent-Tiering do, and what is its key cost trade-off?

   It automatically moves objects between frequent and infrequent access tiers (and optional archive tiers) based on changing access patterns, with no retrieval fees. The trade-off is a small per-object monthly monitoring/automation charge.

7. What are the retrieval time options for S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval?

   Expedited (1-5 minutes), Standard (3-5 hours), and Bulk (5-12 hours, lowest cost).

8. What is the retrieval time for S3 Glacier Deep Archive, and what is its use case?

   Standard retrieval is within 12 hours and Bulk within 48 hours. It is the lowest-cost class, intended for long-term archives (e.g., 7-10 year compliance data) accessed once or twice a year.

9. Which S3 archive class offers millisecond retrieval like Standard but at lower storage cost?

   S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval, designed for archive data accessed roughly once per quarter that still needs immediate millisecond access.

10. What is an S3 Lifecycle policy and what two action types can it contain?

    A set of rules that automatically manage objects over their lifetime. The two action types are Transition actions (move objects to a cheaper storage class after N days) and Expiration actions (delete objects or expired delete markers after N days).

11. What minimum storage durations and minimum object sizes apply to S3 Standard-IA and One Zone-IA for billing?

    Both have a minimum storage duration charge of 30 days and a minimum billable object size of 128 KB. Objects smaller than 128 KB are billed as 128 KB.

12. In S3 Lifecycle transitions, what is the minimum number of days before an object can be transitioned from Standard to Standard-IA or One Zone-IA?

    30 days. Objects must remain in S3 Standard for at least 30 days before a lifecycle rule can transition them to Standard-IA or One Zone-IA.

13. How can a lifecycle policy clean up incomplete multipart uploads?

    By adding a rule to abort incomplete multipart uploads after a specified number of days, which deletes orphaned parts and stops you paying for storage of partial uploads.

14. What does enabling S3 Versioning do, and can it be turned off once enabled?

    It keeps multiple variants (versions) of an object in the same bucket, protecting against accidental overwrites and deletes. Once enabled, versioning can only be suspended, never fully disabled, and existing versions are retained.

15. When a versioned object is deleted without specifying a version ID, what happens?

    S3 inserts a delete marker as the current version (a non-destructive delete); the previous versions remain and the object can be restored by deleting the delete marker.

16. What is MFA Delete in S3 and what does it protect against?

    A versioning security feature requiring multi-factor authentication to permanently delete an object version or to change the bucket's versioning state. It protects against accidental or malicious permanent deletions. It can only be enabled by the bucket owner (root account) via the CLI/API.

17. What is the prerequisite for configuring S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) or Same-Region Replication (SRR)?

    Versioning must be enabled on both the source and destination buckets, and S3 needs an IAM role with permission to replicate objects.

18. What is the difference between S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) and Same-Region Replication (SRR)?

    CRR replicates objects to a bucket in a different AWS Region (use cases: compliance, lower-latency access, DR). SRR replicates within the same Region (use cases: log aggregation, prod/test sync, sovereignty).

19. Does S3 replication copy objects that existed before replication was enabled?

    No, by default replication only applies to new objects created after the rule is enabled. Existing objects must be copied using S3 Batch Replication.

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