Question 8

Explanation

Option D is CORRECT. Archive Storage is specifically designed for long-term retention of rarely accessed data at the lowest storage cost. For petabytes of genomic data that must be retained indefinitely but is accessed infrequently, Archive Storage offers the most cost-effective solution. While it has higher retrieval costs and a 365-day minimum storage duration, these tradeoffs are acceptable for data that needs indefinite retention with rare access patterns.

Option A is INCORRECT. Standard Storage has the highest storage costs of all Cloud Storage classes, making it prohibitively expensive for petabytes of infrequently accessed data that must be stored indefinitely. It's designed for frequently accessed data, which doesn't match this use case.

Option B is INCORRECT. While Nearline Storage is less expensive than Standard Storage, it's still significantly more costly than Archive Storage for long-term retention. Nearline is optimized for data accessed less than once per month, which is more frequent than the "infrequently accessed" requirement describes.

Option C is INCORRECT. Coldline Storage is less expensive than Nearline but more expensive than Archive for long-term storage. It's designed for data accessed less than once per quarter, but for indefinite retention of petabytes of rarely accessed data, Archive Storage would provide better cost optimization.