Hello! I've published
an article that demystifies S3 storage class selection. Many, many other people have written about this, but I avoid the usual sins:
• Copying quantities from the price list without attending to the units. What is
$0.00099 per GiB
worth? When I write it as 0.099
¢, you
see it's about 0.1¢ or ⅒ of a penny.
• Taking marketing seriously. The price of data retrieval from the Intelligent Tiering storage class is 0, but I can calculate the cost (up to 3.6¢ per GiB) so you can compare storage classes directly.
• Not keeping up with new storage classes, pricing rule changes, and price reductions.
• Complicating the math. Though (or maybe because?) I actually was a credentialed K–12 math teacher, I hate complexity! The intersection of two linear equations is one way to figure and visualize the break-even point, but sums or series make sense to everyone:
STANDARD_IA: 1.25 + 1.25 + 1.25 + 1.25 + 1.25 = 6.25¢ per GiB
INTELLIGENT_TIERING: 2.30 + 1.25 + 1.25 + 0.40 + 0.40 = 5.60
INTELLIGENT_TIERING: 2.30 + 1.25 + 1.25 + 0.40 + 0.40 + ...
GLACIER_IR: 0.40 + 0.40 + 0.40 + 0.40 + 0.40 + ...
I hope you'll find the article useful, and learn at least one new fact about S3 costs! Feedback is welcome. This piece grew out of a much shorter and more limited submission to the (quite useful!) Cloud Efficiency Hub at
hub.pointfive.co/hub .