S3 storage classes are one of the most reliable sources of exam questions, because they’re all about trading retrieval speed for cost. Same durability across the board — what changes is how fast and how cheaply you can get your data back.
The classes, ranked by how often you touch the data
Standard — frequent access, no retrieval fee. Intelligent-Tiering — S3 moves objects between tiers for you when access is unpredictable. Standard-IA and One Zone-IA — cheaper storage, but you pay to retrieve; One Zone drops the multi-AZ resilience for a lower price. Glacier Instant / Flexible / Deep Archive — archival, cheapest storage, slowest and priciest retrieval.
Test yourself
Data is accessed unpredictably — sometimes daily, sometimes not for months — and you don’t want to manage lifecycle rules yourself. Which storage class?
- S3 Standard
- S3 Intelligent-Tiering
- S3 Glacier Deep Archive
- S3 One Zone-IA
👉 Click to reveal the answer & explanation
Correct answer: B. Intelligent-Tiering automatically moves objects between access tiers based on usage, so you get cost savings without predicting the pattern or writing lifecycle rules. Standard (A) never saves on cold data; Deep Archive (C) is too slow for daily access; One Zone-IA (D) suits infrequent, non-critical data.
Related topics
Amazon S3 · EBS vs EFS vs S3 · AWS KMS
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