AWS Certified Solutions Architect – ProfessionalContinuously Improve Existing SolutionsHard
A global e-commerce company uses Amazon S3 for storing product images, videos, and customer-uploaded content. The total storage volume is petabytes, and the number of objects is in the billions. The operations team needs to regularly audit storage usage, identify objects that are infrequently accessed but stored in expensive storage classes, and identify objects that lack proper metadata tags for cost allocation. Manually inspecting S3 buckets and objects is infeasible due to the sheer scale. The company requires an automated solution to generate daily reports detailing object metadata, storage class, and last access date for all objects across multiple buckets. Which AWS service should a Solutions Architect recommend to efficiently gather this information?
- AAmazon S3 Inventory reports.
- BAWS CloudTrail logs with S3 data events.
- CAWS Config rules for S3 bucket compliance.
- DAmazon CloudWatch metrics for S3.
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: A. Amazon S3 Inventory reports.
Amazon S3 Inventory provides a flat-file list of your objects and their corresponding metadata, such as storage class, encryption status, and last modified date, for an S3 bucket or a shared prefix. It can generate daily or weekly reports, making it ideal for auditing, optimizing storage costs, and identifying objects for lifecycle management or tagging requirements at petabyte scale.
Why the other options are wrong
- B. CloudTrail logs record API activity (data events can be enabled for S3 object actions), but processing billions of individual API calls daily to build a comprehensive inventory with last access date and storage class for all objects would be extremely complex and costly. It's for auditing actions, not inventory.
- C. AWS Config rules assess compliance of S3 *buckets* (e.g., encryption enabled), but they do not provide an inventory of *objects* within the buckets, nor do they detail object-level metadata like storage class or last access date for all objects.
- D. CloudWatch provides metrics for S3 (e.g., bucket size, number of objects), but it does not provide granular, object-level metadata like individual object storage class, last access date, or custom tags, which are crucial for the specified auditing requirements.
Amazon S3 Inventory
A feature of Amazon S3 that provides a flat-file list of objects in a bucket or prefix, along with their metadata, for auditing, reporting, and lifecycle management.
- Generates daily or weekly CSV, ORC, or Parquet reports.
- Includes object metadata like storage class, ETag, last modified date.
- Useful for large-scale storage auditing and optimization.
- Can be configured for all objects or a specific prefix.
Memory trick: S3 Inventory is your 'Warehouse Ledger', listing every item and its details.