A global media company is migrating a large video archive (hundreds of petabytes) from on-premises to AWS. The data is rarely accessed (less than once a year), but when accessed, retrieval times of up to 12 hours are acceptable. The company's primary goal is to minimize storage costs while maintaining data durability. Which Amazon S3 storage class is MOST cost-effective for this scenario?

Why the other options are wrong

• B. S3 One Zone-IA is for infrequently accessed, non-critical data that can be stored in a single Availability Zone for lower cost, but it's still significantly more expensive than S3 Glacier Deep Archive and does not offer the same cost savings for true archive data.
• C. S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval (formerly S3 Glacier) is cheaper than S3 Standard-IA but more expensive than S3 Glacier Deep Archive, offering retrieval options from minutes to hours. S3 Glacier Deep Archive is more cost-effective for 'rarely accessed' data with a 12-hour retrieval tolerance.
• D. S3 Standard-IA is for data accessed less frequently but requiring rapid access (milliseconds), making it more expensive than Glacier classes and unsuitable for 'rarely accessed' with 12-hour retrieval tolerance.