S3 Buckets

Correct Answer: S3 Cross-Region Replication

S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) asynchronously replicates newly written objects from a source bucket in one AWS Region to a destination bucket in another Region. This allows each application to read from its local regional replica, minimizing read latency and reducing cross-Region data transfer for reads. Because the scenario accepts eventual consistency and replication lag, CRR is a strong fit. AWS DataSync is optimized for bulk or scheduled data movement and migrations rather than continuous object-by-object replication for low-latency regional reads. S3 Transfer Acceleration improves transfer performance over the public Internet via edge locations, typically for uploads/downloads by geographically distant clients; it does not create regional replicas or materially reduce inter-Region read latency for applications running within AWS Regions. An S3 VPC Endpoint provides private connectivity to S3 within the same Region but does not address cross-Region latency or replicate data.

Correct Answer: Use an IAM role for EC2 with S3 access policy

Using an IAM role assigned to the EC2 instances with an appropriate S3 access policy is the best practice for securely allowing access to the S3 bucket. This avoids the issues of sharing credentials or enabling overly permissive access policies.

Correct Answer: Enable S3 Cross-Region Replication

S3 Cross-Region Replication automatically copies objects to another S3 bucket in a different region, meeting the requirement of storing copies in multiple locations. The other options don't provide automated replication of objects across regions.