2.6-cost-optimization-strategy

2.6 Cost Optimization Strategy (New Solutions)

Storage Tiering

S3 Storage Classes (Cheatsheet)

Class	Use Case	Retrieval Time	Min Duration
Standard	Active data	ms	None
Intelligent-Tiering	Unknown access patterns	ms	30 days
Standard-IA	Infrequent access	ms	30 days
One Zone-IA	Non-critical, infrequent	ms	30 days
Glacier Instant	Archive, fast access needed	ms	90 days
Glacier Flex	Archive, rare access	min-hrs	90 days
Deep Archive	Complaince, 1-2 times/year	12-48 hrs	180 days

WARNING

Exam Gotcha: S3 Intelligent-Tiering has a monitoring fee per 1000 objects. It moves objects between tiers automatically. It does not charge retrieval fees.

Data Transfer Costs

• Inbound: Generally Free.
• Outbound (Internet): Paid.
• Inter-AZ: Paid (in both directions).
• Inter-Region: Paid.
• PrivateLink: Paid (Hourly + Data processed).
• CloudFront: Often cheaper than direct S3 egress because of lower rates.

Optimization tips

• Use VPC Endpoints (Gateway) for S3/DynamoDB (Free) instead of NAT Gateway (Paid).
• Use CloudFront to cache content and reduce origin fetch data transfer.