AWS S3 Storage Class

5 min readAug 8, 2021

S3 contains Seven types of storage classes:

Amazon S3 Standard — General Purpose

Frequent access data with high availability, low latency, and high throughput performance.
Designed for durability of 99.999999999% of objects across multiple Availability Zones.
Data is safe even an entire Availability Zone down.
Supports SSL for data in transit and encryption of data at rest.
Use cases, including cloud applications, dynamic websites, content distribution, mobile and gaming applications, and use cases where we need to access the data frequently.

Automatically optimizes storage costs for data with changing access patterns.
Small monthly monitoring and auto-tiering fee.
Designed for durability of 99.999999999% of objects across multiple Availability Zones
Designed for 99.9% availability over a given year
No operational overhead, no retrieval fees, no additional tiering fees apply when objects are moved between access tiers within the S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage class.

How does it work?

S3 Intelligent-Tiering works by monitoring access patterns and then moving the objects that have not been accessed in 30 consecutive days to the Infrequent Access tier.
S3 Intelligent-Tiering will move objects in the Archive Access tier that haven’t been accessed for 90 consecutive days.
Then after 180 consecutive days of no access to the Deep Archive Access tier.
If the objects are accessed later, S3 Intelligent-Tiering moves the objects back to the Frequent Access tier.
There are no retrieval fees when using the S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage class.
No additional tiering fees when objects are moved between access tiers within S3 Intelligent-Tiering.
It is the ideal storage class for data sets with unknown storage access patterns, like new applications, or unpredictable access patterns, like data lakes.

IA stands for infrequently accessed.
Standard IA storage class is used when data is accessed less frequently but requires rapid access when needed.
It has a lower fee than the S3 standard, but you will be charged a retrieval fee.
It is designed to sustain the loss of 2 facilities concurrently.
It is mainly used for larger objects greater than 128 KB kept for at least 30 days.
It provides low latency and high throughput performance.
It is designed for 99.99% availability and 99.999999999% durability failures
Use Cases: As a data store for disaster recovery, backups…

S3 one zone-infrequent access storage class is used when data is accessed less frequently but requires rapid access when needed.
It stores the data in a single availability zone file other storage classes store the data in a minimum of three availability zones. Due to this reason, its cost is 20% less than the Standard IA storage class.
It is cost-effective storage that is replicated from other AWS regions using S3 Cross-Region Replication.
It has the same durability, high performance, and low latency, with a low storage price and low retrieval fee.
It is designed for 99.5% availability and 99.999999999% durability of objects in a single availability zone.
The data can be lost at the time of the destruction of an availability zone as it stores the data in a single availability zone.

S3 Glacier storage class is the cheapest storage class, but it can be used for archives only.
You can store any amount of data at a lower cost than other storage classes.
You can upload the objects directly to the S3 Glacier.
It is designed for 99.999999999% durability of objects across multiple availability zones.
A low-cost design is ideal for long-term archives.
Minimum storage duration of 90 days
S3 Glacier provides three types of models:

Expedited: In this model, data is stored for a few minutes, and it has a very higher fee.

Standard: The retrieval time of the standard model is 3 to 5 hours.

Bulk: The retrieval time of the bulk model is 5 to 12 hours.

S3 Glacier Deep Archive is Amazon S3’s lowest-cost storage class.
Supports long-term retention (7–10 years)and digital preservation for data that may be accessed once or twice a year.
S3 Glacier Deep Archive can also be used for backup and disaster recovery use cases.
Designed for durability of 99.999999999% of objects across multiple Availability Zones
Standard Retrieval time within 12 hours and Bulk retrieval within 48 hours.
S3 PUT API for direct uploads to S3 Glacier Deep Archive and S3 Lifecycle management for automatic migration of objects.

let’s compare everything that we’ve seen.

For durability, they’re all 11 nine So that means you don’t lose any objects.
Highly available is less available in case of infrequent access and one zone IA.
SLA ( S3 Service Level Agreement) is an agreement between provider and customer for the availability of the data.
The number AZ your data is stored three or more than AZs except in One Zone IA, because as the name indicates
There is a minimum capacity to charge per object So when you have the normal S3 or Intelligent Tiering, you’re fine.
When you’re using IA, you need to have a large object rather larger than 128 kilobytes.
For Glacier 40 kilobytes and minimum storage duration is going to be 30 days, Standard IA and 30 days for One Zone IA, and for Glacier 90 days
for actually Glacier Deep Archive, 180 days.
You’re going to be charged a fee anytime you retrieve the data.