Amazon S3 Storage Classes
Amazon S3 Storage Classes Overview
Each object in Amazon S3 has a storage class associated with it. Storage class defines how your object is
stored on Amazon S3 and how you can access it. The prices may vary for different storage classes and you may
save on your storage costs if you choose correct storage class for your use case.
There are two main groups of storage classes:
-
Storage Classes for Frequently Accessed Objects
- suitable for performance-sensitive use cases
-
Storage Classes for Infrequently Accessed Objects
- designed for long-lived and infrequently accessed data.
-
Storage class for Unknown or Changing Access Objects
- designed to optimize costs by automatically moving data to the most cost-effective access tier.
Storage Classes for Frequently Accessed Objects
-
STANDARD - default storage class, the most cost efective solution for many use cases.
-
REDUCED_REDUNDANCY
- an obsolete/deprecated storage class (click here for more details),
the most expensive one and your data is stored with less redundancy than the STANDARD storage class. Switch to STANDARD storage class recommended.
Storage Classes for Infrequently Accessed Objects
-
STANDARD_IA
designed for long-lived and infrequently accessed data. Objects you store under the STANDARD_IA storage class are duplicated on multiple geographically separated
Availability Zones (similar to STANDARD storage class). STANDARD_IA objects are resilient to the loss of an
Availability Zone resulting from disasters, such as earth quakes and floods.
-
ONEZONE_IA
is also designed for data that is not frequently accessed, but objects are stored in only one Availability Zone, which makes it
less expensive than STANDARD_IA. However, the data is not resilient to the physical loss of the Availability Zone.
-
GLACIER and
DEEP_ARCHIVE
- two cold storage classes for data that will be stored for decades without the need to access. As of Jun 2019, these are the cheapest storage classes on AWS.
You pay when you need to access your data stored under the GLACIER and DEEP_ARCHIVE storage classes
(check out the pricing for more details)
Amazon S3 charges a retrieval fee for these objects, so they are most suitable for data that is not accessed frequently.
* STANDARD_IA and ONEZONE_IA storage classes are suitable for objects larger than 128 KB that you plan to store for at least 30 days. If an object
is less than 128 KB, Amazon S3 charges you for 128 KB. If you delete an object before the 30-day minimum, you
are charged for 30 days. We recommend to check Amazon S3 pricing for more details.
Storage class for Unknown or Changing Access Objects
-
INTELLIGENT_TIERING
S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage class designed for customers who want to optimize storage
costs automatically when data access patterns change, without performance impact or operational overhead.
Amazon S3 monitors access patterns of the objects in S3 Intelligent-Tiering, and moves the ones that have
not been accessed for 30 consecutive days to the infrequent access tier. If an object in the infrequent access
tier is accessed, it is automatically moved back to the frequent access tier.
To check Storage Class for a particular file
With S3 Browser
you can easily check storage for a particular file. When you browse an
S3 Bucket,
all files and folders are displayed in the Files table. The 5th column
shows the Storage Class for an each file. This information is returned with the
bucket listing, so no extra API calls required.
File's Storage Class is displayed in the 5th column of the Files table.
Storage Class is also displayed in files' properties on the Properties Tab.
File Properties shows the storage class for an each file
To switch between storage classes
With S3 Browser you can easily switch between storage classes.
Storage class can be changed for one or multiple files/folders, or for entire bucket.
To edit Storage Class for one or multiple files
1. Select the file(s) you want to change storage class for and click:
Files, Change Storage Class to.., [Storage Class]
Select one or multiple files and click Files, Change Storage Class to..
To switch storage class for an entire bucket
With S3 Browser you may also change storage class for an entire bucket, the steps are very similar to the described above:
1. Select the bucket and click
Buckets, Change Storage Class to.., [Storage Class]
Right-click on the bucket and choose desired storage class.
3. S3 Browser will apply selected storage class for all files inside the bucket.
If your Amazon S3 Bucket contains a lot of files, this operation may take a while.
You can significantly increase performance with
S3 Browser Pro.
It allows you to increase the number of concurrent working threads
and thereby process your files much more faster.
To automatically apply storage class during uploading.
You may also configure S3 Browser to automatically apply specific storage class during uploading.
This can be configured via
Default Storage Classes.
1. Click Tools, Default Storage Classes..
Click Tools, Default Storage Classes..
2. Default Storage Classes dialog will open
Default Storage Classes dialog.
3. Click the Add button, Add new Default Storage Class dialog will open:
Add new Default Storage Class dialog
4. Specify the Bucket and optional file mask and desired Storage Class.
5. Click Add and Save changes
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