SAA-C03 Question 374
Select 3A company is running a web application on Amazon EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB). The application processes user-uploaded images and stores the processed images in Amazon S3. The company has noticed that its costs have increased significantly and wants to implement a more cost-effective architecture. Which of the following options can help reduce costs without impacting the application's performance?
- A
Use Amazon EC2 Spot Instances for non-critical processing tasks.
- B
Enable S3 Intelligent-Tiering for storing processed images.
- C
Replace the Application Load Balancer (ALB) with a Network Load Balancer (NLB) to reduce load balancing costs.
- D
Use Amazon CloudFront to cache processed images closer to users.
- E
Switch to a Reserved Instance model for the EC2 instances running the application.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answers: A, B, D
Explanation
To optimize costs, the company should consider using EC2 Spot Instances for non-critical tasks, as they are significantly cheaper than On-Demand Instances. Enabling S3 Intelligent-Tiering reduces storage costs by automatically optimizing the storage tier for processed images. Additionally, using Amazon CloudFront to cache processed images reduces data transfer costs and improves performance by delivering content from edge locations. These solutions collectively help reduce costs without impacting the application's performance.
- A. Correct.
Using Amazon EC2 Spot Instances for non-critical processing tasks can significantly reduce costs, as Spot Instances are often much cheaper than On-Demand Instances. However, they should only be used for tasks that can tolerate interruptions.
- B. Correct.
Enabling S3 Intelligent-Tiering helps optimize storage costs by automatically moving data between storage tiers based on access patterns. This is a cost-effective option for storing processed images.
- C. Incorrect.
Replacing the ALB with an NLB is not a valid cost-saving strategy in this scenario. An ALB is more suitable for HTTP/HTTPS traffic and application-level routing, which is required for the web application.
- D. Correct.
Using Amazon CloudFront to cache processed images reduces data transfer costs and improves performance by serving frequently accessed content from edge locations closer to users.
- E. Incorrect.
Switching to a Reserved Instance model for EC2 instances could reduce costs, but it is not as flexible as Spot Instances for non-critical tasks. Additionally, Reserved Instances require a long-term commitment, which may not align with the company's cost-optimization goals.