Objective 4.1
SAA-C03Design cost-optimized storage solutions.
Objective 4.1 sits in Design Cost-Optimized Architectures, which carries 20% of the Solutions Architect Associate exam. The questions below are original, written from the official objective title above, and each explanation cites the Amazon Web Services (AWS) page it rests on.
Objective title verbatim from the official objectives. Amazon Web Services (AWS) exam page ↗
A worked example
Shown solved, with the whole explanation open: this is what every question here carries.
A rule moves objects to Glacier Instant Retrieval on day 4, then to Deep Archive on day 20. S3 rejects it. What is the earliest valid second date?
Correct.
Checked against docs.aws.amazon.com, August 2026Concept
Archive classes are priced on the assumption that data stays put, so each carries a minimum billed duration. A single lifecycle rule is not allowed to move an object out of a class before that duration has run, which makes the second transition date a function of the first one.
Why B
The first transition happens on day 4, and the class it lands in has a 90 day minimum, so the object cannot leave before day 94. Two separate rules could express an earlier move, but you would still pay the untouched part of the 90 days.
Source
AWS docs: Transitioning objects using S3 Lifecycle, general considerations, checked August 2026For example, S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval has a minimum storage duration of 90 days. You can't specify a lifecycle rule that transitions objects to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval after 4 days, and then transitions objects to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 20 days. In this case the S3 Glacier Deep Archive transition must occur after at least 94 days…
Now you: objective 4.1 questions
No account needed. The explanation opens when you answer.
Sample question 1 of 3
A team adds a lifecycle rule to transition a bucket of 60 KB thumbnails to S3 Standard-IA. Weeks later every object is still S3 Standard. Why?
Sample question 2 of 3
Build artifacts are deleted after 10 days, and a team proposes writing them to S3 Standard-IA to cut cost. Why does that not save?
Sample question 3 of 3
A bucket holds research datasets whose access pattern nobody can predict, and the team will not risk retrieval fees on a wrong guess. Which storage class?
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Read the sources
These are the official pages the questions above cite. Reading them is studying the objective from the primary source, which is what the explanations point you toward anyway.