AWS Storage - S3 Storage Classes & Lifecycles

Class 1: S3 Standard 

Class 2: S3 IA (Infrequent Access)

Class 3: S3 IT (Intelligent Tiering)

Class 4: S3 One-Zone IA

Class 5: S3 Glacier (suitable for archiving students data of 20 years ago)

***Storage classes are dependent on the S3 storage lifecycles.

1. Amazon S3 Standard (S3 Standard)

S3 Standard offers high durability, availability, and performance object storage for frequently accessed data. Because it delivers low latency and high throughput.

S3 Storage Classes can be configured at the object level and a single bucket can contain objects stored across S3 Standard, S3 Intelligent-Tiering, S3 Standard-IA, and S3 One Zone-IA. You can also use S3 Lifecycle policies to automatically transition objects between storage classes without any application changes.

Use Cases:

• cloud applications
• dynamic websites
• content distribution
• mobile and gaming applications
• big data analytics 

Key Features:

• Low latency and high throughput performance
• Designed for durability of 99.999999999% of objects across multiple Availability Zones
• Resilient against events that impact an entire Availability Zone
• Designed for 99.99% availability over a given year
• Backed with the Amazon S3 Service Level Agreement for availability
• Supports SSL for data in transit and encryption of data at rest
• S3 Lifecycle management for automatic migration of objects to other S3 Storage Classes

2. Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA)
S3 Standard-IA is for data that is accessed less frequently, but requires rapid access when needed. S3 Standard-IA offers the high durability, high throughput, and low latency of S3 Standard, with a low per GB storage price and per GB retrieval charge. This combination of low cost and high performance make S3 Standard-IA ideal for long-term storage, backups, and as a data store for disaster recovery files. 

S3 Storage Classes can be configured at the object level and a single bucket can contain objects stored across S3 Standard, S3 Intelligent-Tiering, S3 Standard-IA, and S3 One Zone-IA. You can also use S3 Lifecycle policies to automatically transition objects between storage classes without any application changes.

Use Cases:

• Students data or learning materials and resources on cloud. When the students finish their course, the materials are still stored but using the IA S3 storage class.
• long-term storage.
• data store for disaster recovery files.

Key Features:

• Same low latency and high throughput performance of S3 Standard
• Designed for durability of 99.999999999% of objects across multiple Availability Zones
• Resilient against events that impact an entire Availability Zone
• Data is resilient in the event of one entire Availability Zone destruction
• Designed for 99.9% availability over a given year
• Backed with the Amazon S3 Service Level Agreement for availability
• Supports SSL for data in transit and encryption of data at rest
• S3 Lifecycle management for automatic migration of objects to other S3 Storage Classes

3. Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering (S3 Intelligent-Tiering)

Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering (S3 Intelligent-Tiering) is the first cloud storage that automatically reduces your storage costs on a granular object level by automatically moving data to the most cost-effective access tier based on access frequency, without performance impact, retrieval fees, or operational overhead. S3 Intelligent-Tiering delivers milliseconds latency and high throughput performance for frequently, infrequently, and rarely accessed data in the Frequent, Infrequent, and Archive Instant Access tiers. You can use S3 Intelligent-Tiering as the default storage class for virtually any workload, especially 
For a small monthly object monitoring and automation charge, S3 Intelligent-Tiering monitors access patterns and automatically moves objects that have not been accessed to lower-cost access tiers. S3 Intelligent-Tiering automatically stores objects in three access tiers: 

1. one tier that is optimized for frequent access, 
2. a 40% lower-cost tier that is optimized for infrequent access
3. a 68% lower-cost tier optimized for rarely accessed data. 

S3 Intelligent-Tiering monitors access patterns and moves objects that have not been accessed for 30 consecutive days to the Infrequent Access tier and after 90 days of no access to the Archive Instant Access tier. For data that does not require immediate retrieval, you can set up S3 Intelligent-Tiering to monitor and automatically move objects that aren’t accessed for 180 days or more to the Deep Archive Access tier to realize up to 95% in storage cost savings.

There are no retrieval charges in S3 Intelligent-Tiering. If an object in the Infrequent or Archive Instant Access tier is accessed later, it’s automatically moved back to the Frequent Access tier. If the object you’re retrieving is stored in the optional Deep Archive tiers, before you can retrieve the object, you must first restore a copy using RestoreObject. For information about restoring archived objects, see Restoring Archived Objects. No additional tiering charges apply when objects are moved between access tiers within the S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage class.

Use Cases:

• data lakes
• data analytics
• new applications
• user-generated content.

Key Features:

• Frequent, Infrequent, and Archive Instant Access tiers have the same low-latency and high-throughput performance of S3 Standard
• The Infrequent Access tier saves up to 40% on storage costs
• The Archive Instant Access tier saves up to 68% on storage costs
• Opt-in asynchronous archive capabilities for objects that become rarely accessed
• Deep Archive Access tier has the same performance as Glacier Deep Archive and saves up to 95% for rarely accessed objects
• Designed for durability of 99.999999999% of objects across multiple Availability Zones and for 99.9% availability over a given year
• Backed with the Amazon S3 Service Level Agreement for availability
• Small monthly monitoring and auto tiering charge
• No operational overhead, no lifecycle charges, no retrieval charges, and no minimum storage duration
• Objects smaller than 128KB can be stored in S3 Intelligent-Tiering but will always be charged at the Frequent Access tier rates, and are not charged the monitoring and automation charge.

4. Amazon S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA)

S3 One Zone-IA is for data that is accessed less frequently, but requires rapid access when needed. Unlike other S3 Storage Classes which store data in a minimum of three Availability Zones (AZs), S3 One Zone-IA stores data in a single AZ and costs 20% less than S3 Standard-IA. S3 One Zone-IA is ideal for customers who want a lower-cost option for infrequently accessed data but do not require the availability and resilience of S3 Standard or S3 Standard-IA. 

S3 One Zone-IA offers the same high durability, high throughput, and low latency of S3 Standard, with a low per GB storage price and per GB retrieval charge. S3 Storage Classes can be configured at the object level, and a single bucket can contain objects stored across S3 Standard, S3 Intelligent-Tiering, S3 Standard-IA, and S3 One Zone-IA. You can also use S3 Lifecycle policies to automatically transition objects between storage classes without any application changes.

Use Cases:

• It’s a good choice for storing secondary backup copies of on-premises data
• easily re-creatable data. 
• You can also use it as cost-effective storage for data that is replicated from another AWS Region using S3 Cross-Region Replication.

Key Features:

• Same low latency and high throughput performance of S3 Standard
  
• Designed for durability of 99.999999999% of objects in a single Availability Zone†
  
• Designed for 99.5% availability over a given year
  
• Backed with the Amazon S3 Service Level Agreement for availability
• Supports SSL for data in transit and encryption of data at rest
• S3 Lifecycle management for automatic migration of objects to other S3 Storage Classes

† Because S3 One Zone-IA stores data in a single AWS Availability Zone, data stored in this storage class will be lost in the event of Availability Zone destruction.

5. The Amazon S3 Glacier storage classes

It is purpose-built for data archiving, and are designed to provide you with the highest performance, the most retrieval flexibility, and the lowest cost archive storage in the cloud. 

You can choose from three archive storage classes optimized for different access patterns and storage duration:

1. S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval storage class: For archive data that needs immediate access, such as medical images, news media assets, or genomics data, it is a storage class that delivers the lowest cost storage with milliseconds retrieval. 
2. S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval (formerly S3 Glacier): For archive data that does not require immediate access but needs the flexibility to retrieve large sets of data at no cost, such as backup or disaster recovery use cases with retrieval in minutes or free bulk retrievals in 5—12 hours. 
3. S3 Glacier Deep Archive: To save even more on long-lived archive storage such as compliance archives and digital media preservation, it is the lowest cost storage in the cloud with data retrieval from 12—48 hours.

Use Cases:

• deep-archive 
• archive medical reports
• backup that does not rquire immediate access but needs flexibility
• digital media preservation (radio, tv)