Transition of documents from on-prem to glacier

[Dhruva Mahajan]

I was attempting this question in the mock-

A company has a hybrid cloud architecture that connects its on-premises data center and cloud infrastructure in AWS. It requires a durable storage backup for its corporate documents stored on-premises and a local cache that provides low-latency access to recently accessed data to reduce data egress charges. The documents must be stored on and retrieved from AWS via the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. These files must be immediately accessible within minutes for six months and archived for another decade to meet data compliance.

Which of the following is the best and most cost-effective approach to implement in this scenario?

Correct solution given: Launch a new file gateway that connects to your on-premises data center using AWS Storage Gateway. Upload the documents to the file gateway and set up a lifecycle policy to move the data into Glacier for data archival.

As per the aws whitepapers, for archival your data needs to move from S3 via lifecycle policy. I am not able to find support for the solution provided for this question. Would appreciate some help here.

[JR-TutorialsDojo]

Hello Dhruva Mahajan,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this item.

You’re right that archival in AWS is always managed through S3 lifecycle policies. Data doesn’t go straight into Glacier. In this solution, the File Gateway stores documents in Amazon S3, and then lifecycle policies transition them into Glacier or Glacier Deep Archive for long-term retention. AWS documentation confirms that File Gateway supports S3 storage classes, including Glacier tiers. So the correct solution is:

• Use File Gateway for SMB access and local caching.
• Store files in Amazon S3.
• Apply lifecycle policies to move data into Glacier/Glacier Deep Archive after the required 6-month retention.

This approach meets the SMB, caching, durability, and compliance requirements in a cost-effective way.

Please refer to these:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/filegateway/latest/files3/what-is-file-s3.html
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/filegateway/latest/files3/storage-classes.html

I hope this helps! Let us know if you need further assistance.

Regards,
JR @ Tutorials Dojo