AWS S3 Storage Class

What is S3

Amazon Simple Storage Service or S3 stores objects (files). The objects are stored in buckets. A single account can open up to a maximum of 100 buckets. S3 provides high fetching of data from anywhere on the internet. S3 offers industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance. Due to the multi-region accessibility associated with this AWS product, for most regions in the world, the latency is very low. This is why S3 is getting increasingly popular for storing large files over the internet.

S3 is a viable option for small to large companies, to store data as data lakes, backup and restore, achieve data, and use data for websites and mobile applications, IoT devices, and data analytics. S3 provides optimization and custom configuration management to meet specific business requirements.

Storage Class

Depending upon the usage, and performance access requirements, S3 provides a variety of classes. Each object in S3 has a storage class associated with it. Sometimes these classes provide a budget plan for different types of data; this comes in handy when the user is managing different types of data with varying retrieval frequencies. Users can choose a class depending on the case scenario and performance access requirements.

1. S3 Standard: It’s the default storage class. This class ensures frequent data access. If the user is unsure what storage class to use, the S3 standard is the most preferred class.
2. Reduced Redundancy Storage: AWS doesn’t recommend this storage class. It is designed to be used if the data is noncritical and reproducible, and in most cases, this type of data is not used in everyday services.
3. S3 Intelligent-Tiering: This storage class auto-assigns data to different storage classes depending on the retrieval frequency and by doing so it optimizes the storage cost. It doesn’t affect the performance of the retrieval. If data isn’t used for a long time, it automatically moves data to the optimized class.
4. S3 Standard-IA: This is used for long-lived and infrequently accessed data. This is preferable for storing backups.
5. S3 One Zone-IA: This is also used for long-lived and infrequently accessed data, but the catch is that the data is stored in one availability zone. So the data is not resilient to physical loss of the availability zone.
6. S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval: This is preferred for rarely accessed data. It provides millisecond retrieval time. It provides the same latency and throughput performance as S3 Standard-IA but the retrieval cost is higher than S3 Standard-IA.
7. S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval: This is used for less accessed bulk data. The retrieval time can range from 1 minute to 12 hours. This period can be fixed. But the data must be stored for a minimum of 90 days for this storage class to activate.
8. S3 Glacier Deep Archive: For data that rarely need to be accessed this storage class is appropriate at a very low cost. It has a minimum storage duration period of 180 days. The default retrieval time for this class is about 12 hours.

Due to the variety of storage classes available for S3, it’s highly affordable for all types of companies. To store large files, such as video files, S3 is the first option one should consider. AWS provides industry-leading technology and reliable retrieval latency for S3. You should test out different storage classes, to understand which is suitable for you.