A company is choosing Amazon S3 storage classes for data in the same AWS Region. Order these storage classes from the highest to the lowest storage price per GB-month. Consider storage price only, not retrieval or request charges.
Put these in order, first to last.
- S3 Glacier Deep Archive
- S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval
- S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval
- S3 Standard
- S3 Standard-Infrequent Access
Show answer and explanation
Correct order
- S3 Standard
- S3 Standard-Infrequent Access
- S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval
- S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval
- S3 Glacier Deep Archive
Every step down this ladder trades a little more storage price for a little less access. S3 Standard costs the most to store because data is expected to be read frequently and there are no retrieval fees. Standard-IA serves data read rarely — roughly half the storage price, in exchange for a per-GB retrieval fee. Glacier Instant Retrieval cuts the storage price further while keeping millisecond access for data touched about once a quarter. Glacier Flexible Retrieval lowers the storage price again and moves retrieval to minutes through hours. Glacier Deep Archive is the cheapest storage in S3, with retrievals within 12 hours.
Exam tip. Cost questions usually trade storage price against retrieval time and fees. Match the class to how often the data is read and how fast it's needed.