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SAA-019
In image upload processing, users around the world upload large files to S3. To improve the speed of long-distance uploads, which feature is the most appropriate?
Choices
Explanation and answer
Read the explanation and correct answer (spoiler — try answering first)
Correct answer: A. S3 Transfer Acceleration
Explanation
S3 Transfer Acceleration uses CloudFront edge locations to speed up uploads to S3 from long distances.
Per-choice explanations
A. S3 Transfer Acceleration
Correct. It is used for global S3 upload acceleration.
B. S3 Versioning
Incorrect. Versioning is a feature for retaining previous versions.
C. S3 Object Lock
Incorrect. Object Lock is used for tamper protection and retention period management.
D. S3 Glacier Deep Archive
Incorrect. Glacier Deep Archive is a low-cost storage class for long-term archives.
Practical Use
S3 Transfer Acceleration uploads to an S3 bucket via CloudFront edge locations, speeding up long-distance, large-file uploads. Instead of the usual S3 endpoint (bucket.s3.amazonaws.com), the user uses a dedicated endpoint (bucket.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com). The short hop to the nearest edge goes over the public internet, and from the edge onward traffic travels over the AWS backbone to the bucket's Region. Because long segments achieve more stable throughput, the benefit is largest for upload use cases with users scattered across the globe. Alternatives include parallelism via multipart upload, considering different paths such as AWS DataSync or Snow Family, or moving the S3 bucket itself to a Region closer to users. Transfer Acceleration most directly fits the case of "do not move the bucket location, but accelerate long-distance uploads." Pricing adds an acceleration surcharge on top of regular S3 data transfer, so the convention is to first measure benefit with the Speed Comparison Tool that Amazon provides before adopting it. On SAA-C03, when keywords such as "large uploads to S3 from around the world," "accelerate long-distance uploads," or "do not move the bucket Region" appear, Transfer Acceleration is the correct answer. Distractors include "use CloudFront to upload" (CloudFront is primarily for download delivery and PUTs still require a separate origin), "Direct Connect" (an on-premises dedicated line, not for end users), and "multipart upload alone solves it" (it does not shorten the per-segment latency).