A high-performance Windows workload requires a storage volume that consistently delivers 10,000 IOPS. The company wants to avoid paying for capacity they do not need. Which storage option provides the required consistent IOPS at the lowest cost?

The correct answer is to use a General Purpose SSD (gp3) Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume configured with 10,000 provisioned IOPS. gp3 volumes offer a baseline of 3,000 IOPS and 125 MiB/s throughput for any size volume, and you can provision additional IOPS and throughput independently. This allows you to meet the 10,000 IOPS requirement without over-provisioning storage capacity, making it the most cost-effective solution for this specific need. Using a Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1) volume would also meet the performance requirement, but io1 volumes are generally more expensive for the same IOPS compared to gp3, especially when you don't need extremely high capacity. Amazon EFS is a shared file system and is typically more expensive for single-instance, high-performance block storage needs. Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is also a fully managed file system and would be more costly and complex than a simple EBS volume for a single Windows workload requiring block storage.