SAP-C02 Practice Question 96: Throughput Optimized HDD Sequential

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (SAP-C02) · Test 10 · question 6 of 10

Design for New Solutionseasy

A log-processing cluster reads and writes large sequential files. Each node needs a 12 TiB data volume that sustains about 400 MiB/s of throughput, and the data can be rebuilt from Amazon S3, so the company wants the lowest cost per gigabyte that still meets the throughput requirement. The operating system runs on a separate boot volume. Random I/O performance is not important.

Which EBS volume type should the solutions architect choose for the data volumes?

Show answer and explanation

Answer:

D. Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) volumes

HDD-backed volumes are *"optimized for large streaming workloads where the dominant performance attribute is throughput."* Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) is listed for big data, data warehouses and log processing, supports volumes of 125 GiB to 16 TiB and up to 500 MiB/s per volume, so it meets a 400 MiB/s sequential requirement on a 12 TiB volume at a lower storage price than SSD (option D). HDD volumes cannot be boot volumes, which is why the operating system uses a separate volume.

- A is wrong because gp3 can deliver the throughput, but it is an SSD type aimed at transactional workloads. It costs more per gigabyte than an HDD type when random I/O does not matter. - B is wrong because io2 Block Express is designed for sustained IOPS and sub-millisecond latency, which the workload does not need, and it is the most expensive type. - C is wrong because sc1 is limited to 250 MiB/s per volume, below the 400 MiB/s requirement, although it has the lowest storage cost.

Reference: Amazon EBS volume types

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