Cut S3 video costs by expiring incomplete multipart uploads and using S3 Standard-IA after 180 days

SAP-C02 By islever Editorial Last updated

Determine cost optimization and visibility strategies. Identify opportunities for cost optimizations. Determine a cost optimization strategy to meet solution goals and objectives.

Short answer

CE Expire incomplete multipart uploads after 7 days and transition objects to S3 Standard-IA after 180 days.

Question

A company has an application that stores user-uploaded videos in an Amazon S3 bucket that uses S3 Standard storage. Users access the videos frequently in the first 180 days after the videos are uploaded. Access after 180 days is rare. Named users and anonymous users access the videos. Most of the videos are more than 100 MB in size. Users often have poor internet connectivity when they upload videos, resulting in failed uploads. The company uses multipart uploads for the videos. A solutions architect needs to optimize the S3 costs of the application. Which combination of actions will meet these requirements? (Choose two.)
  1. Configure the S3 bucket to be a Requester Pays bucket.
  2. Use S3 Transfer Acceleration to upload the videos to the S3 bucket.
  3. Create an S3 Lifecycle configuration o expire incomplete multipart uploads 7 days after initiation. Correct Answer
  4. Create an S3 Lifecycle configuration to transition objects to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval after 1 day.
  5. Create an S3 Lifecycle configuration to transition objects to S3 Standard-infrequent Access (S3 Standard- IA) after 180 days. Correct Answer

Key Takeaways

Two different cost problems need two different lifecycle rules: aborting incomplete multipart uploads removes the parts of failed uploads that are never cleaned up, and transitioning to S3 Standard-IA after 180 days matches the storage price to the access pattern that actually follows that point.

An application stores user-uploaded videos larger than 100 MB in S3 Standard. Videos are accessed frequently for the first 180 days and rarely after, uploads often fail on poor connections leaving incomplete multipart uploads behind, and both named and anonymous users access the content.

Common mistake: Reaching for S3 Transfer Acceleration to fix failed uploads. Transfer Acceleration optimizes upload throughput over long distances, but a user on a poor connection is still bandwidth constrained, so it does not address the root cause, and it also adds a per-GB cost. Requester Pays is excluded because both named and anonymous users access the videos.

Expert Analysis

Why the Answer Is Correct

Failed multipart uploads leave uploaded parts behind that are billed but never referenced by a completed object, and for videos over 100 MB on unreliable connections this accumulates quickly. A lifecycle rule that expires incomplete multipart uploads seven days after initiation removes that waste automatically, which is why C is correct. Because access is frequent for the first 180 days and rare afterwards, a lifecycle transition to S3 Standard-IA at 180 days moves the cold objects to the lower-cost storage class while keeping the retrieval class appropriate for occasional reads, which is why E is correct.

Why the Other Options Are Wrong

A: A Requester Pays bucket makes the anonymous users pay for their own requests and downloads, and the requirement is to optimize S3 costs for the company while serving both named and anonymous users. B: Transfer Acceleration improves throughput over long distances for uploads, but a user with poor internet connectivity is still limited by their own bandwidth, so it does not solve the failed uploads. D: Transitioning to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval after a single day is wrong because the videos are read frequently for 180 days, and Instant Retrieval has higher per-request costs than the frequent access path in that window.

Community Comment Notes

The community voted 88 to 1 for C and E. Asked directly why not B, a commenter explained that poor internet connectivity is the user's own bandwidth limitation, so transfer acceleration cannot help, and the other commenters focused on incomplete multipart upload parts being billed storage that serves no purpose.

Official Reference

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/mpuoverview.html

This link opens the official vendor documentation in a new tab.

Community Votes

CE
100%

100% of anonymous learners picked answer CE. Votes are pick records left by other test-takers — they are not the verified answer.

Discussion 9 contributions

Compiled from public community threads and reader submissions, lightly edited for clarity. Handles and vote tallies are shown as recorded, and comments reflect the views of individual contributors.

From public community threads 9

  1. ebbff63 👍 4
    C - optimizes the S3 storage costs effectively E - address frequent access in the first 180 days and infrequent access afterward
  2. JoeTromundo 👍 3
    C: Incomplete multipart uploads consume unnecessary storage and increase costs, especially with large files like videos. Setting a lifecycle policy to automatically delete incomplete uploads after 7 days helps reduce unnecessary storage costs without manual intervention. E: The videos are frequently accessed in the first 180 days and rarely accessed after that. Transitioning the videos to S3 Standard-IA after 180 days reduces costs while still providing immediate retrieval when needed. S3 Standard-IA is designed for infrequently accessed data and offers lower storage costs than S3 Standard while maintaining fast access times. Why not B? S3 Transfer Acceleration improves upload speeds for users with poor internet connectivity, but it INCURS ADDITIONAL COSTS. While this can help with uploads, it does NOT directly optimize STORAGE COSTS, which is the main goal here.
  3. zapper1234 👍 3
    B and E are the only ones that make sense to me
  4. mifune 👍 2
    B - for transfers of files over long distances between your client and an S3 bucket | E - for reducing cost for data that is accessed less frequently.
  5. kgpoj 👍 1
    CE for sure. Why not B? The root cause for failed upload is due to that fact that user has poor internet connectivity. That's not something transfer accelerator can help with, maybe the user need to find a better internet provider, or use Elon's star link
Show 4 more comments
  1. Russs99 👍 1
    CE are the best options. In option C, incomplete upload should be deleted to save costs.
  2. AhmedSalem 👍 1
    From the cost management perspective, the answer should be CE
  3. d401c0d 👍 1
    Couldn't have said it better than JoeTromundo
  4. ujizane 👍 3
    Cost Optimization so CE

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