Introduction to Amazon S3 Storage Classes

11:11 Systems recently took our partnership with AWS to the next level. We’re offering Amazon S3 storage, along with our award-winning support and flexible management at an unbeatable price.

While we often say that Amazon S3 Infrequent Access storage is the best blend of performance and price, it’s important to know that AWS offers other storage classes. In addition to infrequent access, you can purchase other storage classes directly from AWS or through 11:11 Systems.

The list below provides some of the storage that choose, and will give you and idea of the classes available that will suit your particular business needs.

• • S3 Standard: This is the default storage class, designed for frequently accessed data. It offers high durability, availability, and performance, and includes things like more API access and data transfer for objects and storage that need to be accessed on a read-only basis. Any data written to Standard classes are eventually written to at least 3 availability zones within a region, meaning that your data will always be there when you need it. Because many of the costs are included, this is also the most expensive “list price” class of storage.
    Use Case:  You should consider Amazon S3 Standard for production usage, such as leveraging it for cloud cloud applications, dynamic websites, and big data analytics.

• • S3 Intelligent-Tiering: Ideal for data with unknown or changing access patterns, this class automatically moves data between two access tiers (frequent and infrequent) to optimize costs without impacting performance.
    Use Case:  S3 Intelligent-Tiering is ideal for data you know you need to modify, write, or access for a short period of time, and then leave as-is, for the most part. Consider this for use cases such as Internet of Things (IoT) data analysis or log management.

• • S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA): This class is for data that is accessed less frequently but requires rapid access when needed. It offers lower object storage costs compared to S3 Standard, but with a retrieval fee.
    Use Case:  Amazon S3 Standard IA is 11:11 Systems’ sweet spot because in our opinion it is the best for backup and data protection use cases. When purchased through 11:11 we will take care of the greater risk of egress and API fees for standard and fair use access, leaving you with performant, low-cost storage for backup purposes.

• • S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA): This class is similar to S3 Standard-IA, but data is stored in a single Availability Zone. This makes it a lower-cost option for infrequently accessed data that doesn’t require the resilience of multiple Availability Zones.
    Use Case:  While its low cost is appealing, especially for things such as backups, we do not recommend that you use this class for active backup jobs as you are trading storage durability for a little bit less cost.

• • S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval: Designed for archive data that needs immediate access. It provides the lowest-cost storage for long-term data that is rarely accessed but requires retrieval in milliseconds. When there was only one version of Glacier storage, this class is what AWS provided.
    Use Case:  Any of the Glacier Tier storage classes are suitable for archiving GFS restore points that are only there for compliance reasons. Retrieving data out of AWS S3 Glacier would be cost-prohibitive, so you most likely will never want to actively use this data.

• • S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval: Suitable for long-term archive data that is rarely accessed and can tolerate retrieval times of minutes to hours. It offers a lower cost compared to Glacier Instant Retrieval.
    Use Case:  While I’m sure there are use cases for Glacier Flexible Retrieval, they must be few and far between. If you are considering Glacier for archiving backups, we recommend that you stick with Instant Retrieval.

• • S3 Glacier Deep Archive: The lowest-cost storage class, intended for data that is rarely accessed and requires retrieval times of hours.
    Use Case:  This storage class is definitely your “compliance check box” class. Use it for long-term digital records preservation for a law firm, health care, or financial services company, for example. Any data retrieval would be expensive and also take a long time.

It’s also worth noting that Amazon S3 Outposts are also available, but they’re not really a class of storage. This tier allows you to store Amazon S3 data on-premises using AWS Outposts physical infrastructure. While this may be interesting for those that may have data locality concerns, it’s literally an edge computing use case.

Conclusion

While Amazon S3 is generally discussed as a single service, there are several different object storage class options. As you look to leverage object storage services, you should take note of the various classes so you can choose the storage that is most suitable for your organization.

For more information about 11:11 Cloud Object Storage, please check out the following resources or talk to an 11:11 Representative.

11:11 Cloud Object Storage for AWS

Product Page: 11:11 Cloud Object Storage

Data Sheet: 11:11 Cloud Object Storage