DEA-C01 Practice Question 54: S3 Lifecycle Retention Policy

S3 Lifecycle is the built-in mechanism for exactly this. A lifecycle configuration is "a set of rules that define actions that Amazon S3 applies to a group of objects", of two kinds: "Transition actions – These actions define when objects transition to another storage class" and "Expiration actions – These actions define when objects expire. Amazon S3 deletes expired objects on your behalf." The documented example is this very shape: an initial transition to a cheaper class, then an expiration action once the objects are no longer needed. Scoping the rule to the raw/ prefix leaves the rest of the bucket alone, and Amazon S3 applies the rules to existing objects as well as new ones.

Option A rebuilds lifecycle management as code the team must own. It pays LIST, COPY and DELETE request charges, has to be idempotent and paginated, and fails silently the first time a run is missed.

Option B misreads versioning. Noncurrent version expiration removes *previous versions* of objects that have been overwritten or deleted; it does nothing to the current version of a file that was written once and never touched again, so nothing would ever be deleted.

Option D uses Athena as a scheduler and an inventory report as a work queue. Athena cannot delete S3 objects, it queries data, so this needs additional code anyway, and a weekly inventory means the retention boundary is enforced up to a week late.

Reference: Managing the lifecycle of objects