A global e-commerce company stores customer order data in an Amazon S3 bucket. The data is initially accessed frequently for the first 30 days for order processing and fraud detection. After 30 days, access decreases significantly, but the data must be retained for compliance reasons for 7 years. Retrieval should still be possible within minutes. Which S3 Lifecycle policy transition strategy minimizes costs while meeting these requirements?
- ATransition to S3 One Zone-IA after 30 days, then delete after 7 years.
- BTransition to S3 Intelligent-Tiering after 30 days, then to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval after 90 days.
- CTransition to S3 Standard-IA after 30 days, then to S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval after 90 days.
- DTransition to S3 Glacier after 30 days, then to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 90 days.
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: C. Transition to S3 Standard-IA after 30 days, then to S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval after 90 days.
S3 Standard-IA is cost-effective for data accessed less frequently but requiring rapid access. After 90 days, S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval offers even lower costs for archival with retrieval times of minutes to hours, meeting the 7-year retention and 'minutes' retrieval requirement (Standard retrieval is within 3-5 hours, Expedited within 1-5 minutes).
Why the other options are wrong
- A. S3 One Zone-IA is not recommended for compliance data due to its single Availability Zone design, and deleting after 7 years is not a transition strategy.
- B. S3 Intelligent-Tiering automatically moves data between access tiers, but managing explicit transitions to Glacier Flexible Retrieval offers more control and potentially better cost optimization for this specific access pattern.
- D. Glacier Deep Archive has retrieval times of hours to days, which does not meet the 'minutes' retrieval requirement.
S3 Lifecycle Policies for Cost Optimization
S3 Lifecycle policies define rules to automatically transition objects to different S3 storage classes or expire them, based on age or other criteria. This helps optimize storage costs by moving data to more cost-effective classes as access patterns change.
- Automates object transitions and expirations
- Reduces storage costs
- Based on object age or access patterns
- Applies to specific prefixes or entire buckets
Memory trick: Standard, IA, Glacier: Scale, Access, Archive.