AWS Certified Data Engineer – AssociateData Storage and ManagementMedium
A data engineer is designing a data archiving strategy for highly sensitive customer data that must be retained for 10 years for regulatory compliance. The data is accessed extremely rarely (e.g., once a year or less) and can tolerate retrieval times of several hours. The primary objective is to minimize storage costs while meeting durability and compliance requirements. Which S3 storage class should be chosen?
- AAmazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval
- BAmazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA)
- CAmazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive
- DAmazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: C. Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive
S3 Glacier Deep Archive is designed for long-term archival of data that is accessed once or twice a year, offering the lowest storage costs and supporting retrieval times of several hours, perfectly matching the requirements.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval offers millisecond retrieval but is more expensive than Deep Archive and not necessary for data accessed once a year with multi-hour tolerance.
- B. S3 Standard-IA is for data accessed less frequently but still requiring rapid access (minutes), and is more expensive than deep archival classes.
- D. S3 Intelligent-Tiering automatically moves data between access tiers based on access patterns, but for explicitly 'extremely rarely accessed' data with tolerance for long retrieval, a dedicated archival class is more cost-effective.
S3 Glacier Deep Archive
Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive is Amazon S3's lowest-cost storage class, designed for long-term archival of data that is accessed rarely (e.g., once or twice a year) and can tolerate retrieval times of several hours.
- Lowest cost S3 storage class
- Designed for long-term archival (7-10+ years)
- Retrieval times in hours
- High durability (11 nines)
Memory trick: Deep Archive: deep savings for deep sleep data.