A global software company is migrating its on-premises data warehouse to AWS. The data warehouse contains petabytes of historical data that is rarely accessed but must be retained for compliance purposes for seven years. New data is added daily and needs to be queryable immediately for up to 90 days. After 90 days, the data access frequency drops significantly. The company wants to minimize storage costs while meeting all access and retention requirements. Which storage strategy is the most cost-optimized?
- AStore all data in Amazon S3 Standard-IA for seven years.
- BStore all data in Amazon Redshift for seven years.
- CImplement an S3 Lifecycle Policy to transition data from S3 Standard to S3 Standard-IA after 90 days, then to S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval after 1 year.
- DImplement an S3 Lifecycle Policy to transition data from S3 Standard to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 90 days.
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: D. Implement an S3 Lifecycle Policy to transition data from S3 Standard to S3 Glacier Deep Archive after 90 days.
The requirement is for immediate queryability for 90 days (S3 Standard is suitable for new data), and then rare access but 7-year retention for compliance. S3 Glacier Deep Archive is the lowest-cost storage for long-term archival data with retrieval times in hours, making it ideal for the compliance requirement after 90 days. An S3 Lifecycle Policy automates this transition, optimizing costs.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. S3 Standard-IA is cheaper than Standard but still too expensive for 7 years of rarely accessed data compared to Glacier Deep Archive.
- B. Redshift is for active querying, not cost-effective for petabytes of rarely accessed historical data.
- C. This option uses S3 Standard-IA and S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval, which are more expensive than S3 Glacier Deep Archive for the 7-year compliance archive with rare access.
S3 Lifecycle Policies for Cost Optimization
Amazon S3 Lifecycle policies automate the transition or expiration of objects based on defined rules. This allows for significant cost savings by moving data to lower-cost storage classes (e.g., S3 Standard-IA, Glacier) as it ages or becomes less frequently accessed, or by deleting it when no longer needed.
- Automates object transitions between S3 storage classes.
- Automates object expiration (deletion).
- Key tool for optimizing S3 storage costs and meeting retention policies.
Memory trick: Lifecycle rules: Data's journey, cost's reduction.