Cost-Effective Amazon S3 Object Storage Class for File-Sharing Service

Choose the Most Cost-Effective Amazon S3 Object Storage Class for Your File-Sharing Service

Question

A file-sharing service uses Amazon S3 to store files uploaded by users.

Files are accessed with random frequency.

Popular ones are downloaded every day whilst others not so often and some rarely.

What is the most cost-effective Amazon S3 object storage class to implement?

Answers

Explanations

Click on the arrows to vote for the correct answer

A. B. C. D.

Correct Answer - D.

S3 Intelligent-Tiering is a new Amazon S3 storage class designed for customers who want to optimize storage costs automatically when data access patterns change, without performance impact or operational overhead.

S3 Intelligent-Tiering is the first cloud object storage class that delivers automatic cost savings by moving data between two access tiers - frequent access and infrequent access - when access patterns change, and is ideal for data with unknown or changing access patterns.

S3 Intelligent-Tiering stores objects in two access tiers: one tier optimized for frequent access and another lower-cost tier optimized for infrequent access.

For a small monthly monitoring and automation fee per object, S3 Intelligent-Tiering monitors access patterns and moves objects that have not been accessed for 30 consecutive days to the infrequent access tier.

There are no retrieval fees in S3 Intelligent-Tiering.

If an object in the infrequent access tier is accessed later, it is automatically moved back to the frequent access tier.

No additional tiering fees apply when objects are moved between access tiers within the S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage class.

S3 Intelligent-Tiering is designed for 99.9% availability and 99.999999999% durability, and offers the same low latency and high throughput performance of S3 Standard.

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/11/s3-intelligent-tiering/

Option A is incorrect because Amazon S3 Standard would be an inefficient class for storing those objects that will be accessed rarely.

Option B is incorrect because storing objects that are frequently accessed in Amazon S3 Glacier would present operational bottlenecks since these objects would not be available instantly.

https://aws.amazon.com/s3/storage-classes/

Option C is incorrect because storing those objects that are rarely accessed and those that would be accessed frequently in Amazon S3 One Zone-Infrequently Accessed would be inefficient.

The most cost-effective Amazon S3 object storage class to implement for the given scenario would be C. Amazon S3 One Zone-Infrequently Accessed.

Here's why:

Option A: Amazon S3 Standard is designed for frequently accessed data, and is billed based on the amount of data stored, number of requests made to the data, and the amount of data transferred out of Amazon S3. Given that the files are accessed with random frequency, some rarely, it's likely that the cost of storing these files in S3 Standard would be higher than necessary.

Option B: Amazon S3 Glacier is designed for data archiving and long-term storage. Although it is significantly cheaper than S3 Standard, it is intended for data that is accessed infrequently and is typically retrieved over several hours. Retrieving data from Glacier can be costly and time-consuming, so it may not be the best option for a file-sharing service where files need to be accessed quickly.

Option C: Amazon S3 One Zone-Infrequently Accessed is designed for infrequently accessed data that can be recreated if lost. It is stored in a single availability zone, which makes it less durable than S3 Standard, but also less expensive. This storage class is ideal for data that is not accessed frequently but needs to be readily available when needed. Given that the files are accessed with random frequency and some rarely, it's likely that this storage class would provide the necessary durability at a lower cost than S3 Standard.

Option D: Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering is designed to automatically move objects between two access tiers based on changing access patterns. This storage class is ideal for data with unknown or changing access patterns, where the frequency of access is difficult to predict. However, given that the files in this scenario are already categorized into popular, less often accessed, and rarely accessed, it may be unnecessary to use Intelligent-Tiering to manage access to these files.

Therefore, based on the given scenario, the most cost-effective Amazon S3 object storage class to implement would be C. Amazon S3 One Zone-Infrequently Accessed.