Let’s get a quick overview of Amazon S3 Storage Classes from an AWS certification perspective. We will look at important certification questions regarding Amazon S3 Storage Classes.
You will learn
- What are the different Amazon S3 Storage Classes?
- Why are Amazon S3 Storage Classes important?
- When do we use Amazon S3 Storage Classes?
- Differences and Comparison of Amazon S3 Storage Classes - Standard vs Intelligent Tiering vs Standard IA vs One Zone IA vs Glacier vs Glacier Deep Archive
Amazon S3 Storage Classes - Introduction
Different kinds of data can be stored in Amazon S3
- Media files and archives
- Application packages and logs
- Backups of your databases or storage devices
- Long term archives
There are Huge variations in access patterns. So, you have to Trade-off between access time and cost.
S3 storage classes help to optimize your costs while meeting access time needs. They are designed for durability of 99.999999999%(11 9’s).
Amazon S3 Storage Classes - Types
Here are the important S3 Storage Classes:
| Storage Class | Scenario | AZs |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | Frequently accessed data | >=3 |
| Standard-IA | Long-lived, infrequently accessed data (backups for disaster recovery) | >=3 |
| One Zone-IA | Long-lived, infrequently accessed, non-critical data (Easily re-creatable data - thumbnails for images) | 1 |
| Intelligent-Tiering | Long-lived data with changing or unknown access patterns | >=3 |
| Glacier | Archive data with retrieval times ranging from minutes to hours | >=3 |
| Glacier Deep Archive | Archive data that rarely, if ever, needs to be accessed with retrieval times in hours | >=3 |
| Reduced Redundancy (Not recommended) | Frequently accessed, non-critical data | >=3 |
Amazon S3 Storage Classes - Comparison
Here is the comparison between different S3 Storage Classes:
| Feature | Standard | Intelligent Tiering | Standard IA | One Zone IA | Glacier | Glacier Deep Archive |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Availability (Designed) | 99.99% | 99.9% | 99.9% | 99.5% | 99.99% | 99.99% |
| Availability (SLA) | 99.9% | 99% | 99% | 99% | 99.9% | 99.9% |
| Replication AZs | >=3 | >=3 | >=3 | 1 | >=3 | >=3 |
| First byte: ms (milliseconds) | ms | ms | ms | ms | minutes or hours | few hours |
| Min object size (for billing) | NA | NA | 128KB | 128KB | 40KB | 40KB |
| Min storage days (for billing) | NA | 30 | 30 | 30 | 90 | 180 |
| Per GB Cost (varies) | $0.025 | varies | $0.018 | $0.0144 | $0.005 | $0.002 |
| Encryption | Optional | Optional | Optional | Optional | Mandatory | Mandatory |