Managing S3 Intelligent-Tiering

The S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage class delivers automatic storage cost savings in three low latency and high throughput access tiers. It also offers optional archive capabilities to help you get the lowest storage costs in the cloud for data that can be accessed in minutes to hours. The S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage class supports all Amazon S3 features, including the following:

• S3 Inventory, for verifying the access tier of objects

• S3 Replication, for replicating data to any AWS Region

• S3 Storage Lens, for viewing storage usage and activity metrics

• Server-Side Encryption, for object data

• S3 Object Lock, for preventing accidental deletion

• AWS PrivateLink, for accessing Amazon S3 through a private endpoint in a VPC

Identifying which S3 Intelligent-Tiering access tier objects are stored in

You can use Amazon S3 Inventory to get a list of your objects and their corresponding metadata, including their S3 Intelligent-Tiering access tier. Amazon S3 Inventory provides CSV, ORC, or Parquet output files that list your objects and their corresponding metadata on either a daily or weekly basis for an Amazon S3 bucket or a shared prefix. (Shared prefix refers to objects that have names that begin with a common string.)

Viewing the archive status of an object within S3 Intelligent-Tiering

You can set up an Amazon S3 event notification to receive notice when an object within the S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage class has moved to either the Archive Access tier or the Deep Archive Access tier. For more information, see Enabling event notifications.

Amazon S3 can publish event notifications to an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic, an Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) queue, or an AWS Lambda function. For more information, see Amazon S3 Event Notifications.

The following is an example of a message that Amazon S3 sends to publish an s3:IntelligentTiering event. For more information, see Event message structure.

{  
   "Records":[  
      {  
         "eventVersion":"2.3",
         "eventSource":"aws:s3",
         "awsRegion":"us-west-2",
         "eventTime":"1970-01-01T00:00:00.000Z",
         "eventName":"IntelligentTiering",
         "userIdentity":{  
            "principalId":"s3.amazonaws.com"
         },
         "requestParameters":{  
            "sourceIPAddress":"s3.amazonaws.com"
         },
         "responseElements":{  
            "x-amz-request-id":"C3D13FE58DE4C810",
            "x-amz-id-2":"FMyUVURIY8/IgAtTv8xRjskZQpcIZ9KG4V5Wp6S7S/JRWeUWerMUE5JgHvANOjpD"
         },
         "s3":{  
            "s3SchemaVersion":"1.0",
            "configurationId":"testConfigRule",
            "bucket":{  
               "name":"mybucket",
               "ownerIdentity":{  
                  "principalId":"A3NL1KOZZKExample"
               },
               "arn":"arn:aws:s3:::mybucket"
            },
            "object":{  
               "key":"HappyFace.jpg",
               "size":1024,
               "eTag":"d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e",              
            }
         },
         "intelligentTieringEventData":{
            "destinationAccessTier": "ARCHIVE_ACCESS"
            }
      }
   ]
}

You can also use a HEAD object request to view an object's archive status. If an object is stored using the S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage class and is in one of the archive tiers, the HEAD object response shows the current archive tier. It does this using the x-amz-archive-status header.

The following HEAD object request returns the metadata of an object.

HEAD /my-image.jpg HTTP/1.1
Host: bucket.s3.<Region>.amazonaws.com
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:32:00 GMT
Authorization: AWS AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE:02236Q3V0RonhpaBX5sCYVf1bNRuU=

HEAD object requests can also be used to monitor the status of a restore-object request. If the archive restoration is in progress, the HEAD object response includes the x-amz-restore header.

The following is a sample HEAD object response showing an object archived using S3 Intelligent-Tiering with a restore request in progress.

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
x-amz-id-2: FSVaTMjrmBp3Izs1NnwBZeu7M19iI8UbxMbi0A8AirHANJBo+hEftBuiESACOMJp
x-amz-request-id: E5CEFCB143EB505A
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2020 00:28:38 GMT
Last-Modified: Mon, 15 Oct 2012 21:58:07 GMT
ETag: "1accb31fcf202eba0c0f41fa2f09b4d7"
x-amz-storage-class: 'INTELLIGENT_TIERING'
x-amz-archive-status: 'ARCHIVE_ACCESS'
x-amz-restore: 'ongoing-request="true"'
x-amz-restore-request-date: 'Fri, 13 Nov 2020 00:20:00 GMT'
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Type: binary/octet-stream
Content-Length: 300
Server: AmazonS3

Restoring objects from the S3 Intelligent-Tiering Archive Access and Deep Archive Access tiers

To access objects in the S3 Intelligent-Tiering Archive Access and Deep Archive Access tiers, you must initiate the restore request and wait until the object is moved into the Frequent Access tier. For information on archived objects, see Working with archived objects.

When you restore an object from the Archive Access tier or Deep Archive Access tier, the object moves back into the Frequent Access tier. Afterwards, if the object isn't accessed for 30 consecutive days, it automatically moves into the Infrequent Access tier. Then, it moves into the Archive Access tier after a minimum of 90 consecutive days of no access. It moves into the Deep Archive Access tier after a minimum of 180 consecutive days of no access.

There are no retrieval charges in S3 Intelligent-Tiering. Standard and Bulk data retrievals and restore requests are free of charge for both the Archive Access and Deep Archive Access tiers. Subsequent restore requests called on archived objects that have already been restored are billed as a GET request.

Note

When restoring an object in the S3 Intelligent-Tiering archive access tiers, the restore request uses Standard retrieval as the default retrieval option. You can specify Standard or Bulk retrieval within GlacierJobParameters. You can also specify Expedited retrieval from the Archive Access tier, which is charged at the Expedited request and retrieval rate.

You can restore an archived object using the Amazon S3 console, the REST API, and the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI).

Using the S3 console

To restore an object using the Amazon S3 console.

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon S3 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/s3/.

2. In the Bucket name list, choose the name of the bucket that contains the objects that you want to restore.

3. In the Objects list, select one or more of the objects that you are restoring, choose Actions, and then choose Restore from S3 Intelligent-Tiering Archive Access or Deep Archive Access.

4. Choose Restore.

   Note

   Unlike in S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval and S3 Glacier Deep Archive restore requests, you do not need to choose the tier you want to upgrade to. Objects from the S3 Intelligent-Tiering Archive Access and Deep Archive Access tiers automatically restore to the Frequent Access tier.

Using the REST API

Amazon S3 provides an API operation for you to initiate an archive restoration. For more information, see RestoreObject in the Amazon Simple Storage Service API Reference.

Using the AWS CLI

Use the restore-object command to restore objects from the S3 Intelligent-Tiering Archive Access or Deep Archive Access tiers.

The following example restores object dir1/example.obj in awsexamplebucket.

aws s3api restore-object --bucket awsexamplebucket --key dir1/example.obj --restore-request '{}'

You can use the following command to monitor the status of your restore-object request.

aws s3api head-object --bucket awsexamplebucket --key dir1/example.obj

For more information, see restore-object in the AWS CLI Command Reference.

Note

Unlike in the S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval and S3 Glacier Deep Archive storage classes, restore requests for S3 Intelligent-Tiering objects don't accept the days value.

Checking the restore status of an object

You can check the progress of your object's restoration on the Object overview page on the Amazon S3 console. For more information, see Viewing an object overview in the Amazon S3 console. This page will show that the restoration is In progress. You can be notified of object restoration completion by using the s3:ObjectRestore:Completed action with the Amazon S3 Event Notifications feature.

The following table summarizes archived object retrieval speeds.

Storage class or tier	Expedited	Standard	Bulk
S3 Intelligent-Tiering Archive Access tier	1–5 minutes	3–5 hours	5–12 hours
S3 Intelligent-Tiering Deep Archive Access tier	Not available	Within 12 hours	Within 48 hours

Note

Expedited retrievals are a premium feature available for the S3 Intelligent-Tiering Archive Access tier and are charged at the Expedited request and retrieval rate.

For information about paying for Amazon S3, see Amazon S3 Pricing.