A company operates AWS resources across multiple Regions and has an Amazon EFS file system in each Region. The data science team works only in one Region and their data must remain in that Region. A data engineer must create a consolidated dataset by processing files stored on each Regional EFS using a Step Functions state machine that orchestrates Lambda functions. Which option achieves this with the least effort?

The correct option leverages AWS DataSync for efficient, automated, and secure file transfer from each regional EFS to a central EFS in the data science team's Region. This consolidates all necessary data locally for the data science team, allowing their Lambda functions to process it directly from a single, accessible EFS. This approach minimizes cross-Region data access latency and simplifies the processing logic. The other options are less efficient or practical: VPC peering with EFS file locking across Regions introduces complexity and potential performance issues for file access. EFS cross-Region replication is designed for disaster recovery and continuous synchronization, which might be overkill and incur unnecessary costs if only periodic consolidation is needed. Deploying Lambda functions in every Region to process data locally and then write to a central S3 bucket adds complexity to the orchestration and requires managing distributed processing logic.