AWS Storage Gateway adds Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering to File Gateway

In an effort to minimize the challenge of optimizing storage costs, we are pleased to announce that AWS Storage Gateway’s File Gateway now supports the Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage class. Customers frequently have workloads with changing or unknown storage access patterns, making it difficult for them to determine which datasets are more frequently accessed than others. For example, operational and financial teams must often access the same data using different applications, and with seasonal or peak-demand driven patterns. This can make it a challenge for IT departments to accurately identify which datasets can be moved to a lower-cost storage class, designed for infrequent access.

Now, File Gateway customers are able to choose S3 Intelligent-Tiering to help them optimize their storage costs automatically when data access patterns change. For a small monitoring and automation fee per object, S3 Intelligent-Tiering automatically moves data between two access tiers – one tier that is optimized for frequent access, and a lower-cost tier that is optimized for infrequent access.

File Gateway provides on-premises applications with file-based, cached access to virtually unlimited cloud storage using SMB and NFS protocols. File Gateway can be used with on-premises and Amazon EC2-based applications that need file protocol access to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) object storage. With this launch, you can now select S3 Intelligent-Tiering as a storage class when you set up SMB and NFS file shares on your File Gateway. In this blog, we cover the basics of S3 Intelligent-Tiering support for File Gateway – how it works, when to use it, and how to configure file shares to take advantage of this storage class.

Overview

By using S3 Intelligent-Tiering with File Gateway, customers who are uncertain about their workloads’ data access patterns can take advantage of the optimizations offered with this storage class. Specifically, S3 Intelligent-Tiering makes storage cost optimization easy for customers by automatically moving data to the most cost-effective tier without impacting performance or incurring operational overhead.

When SMB or NFS file share data on your File Gateway is written to S3 Intelligent-Tiering, it starts in S3 Intelligent-Tiering’s frequent access tier. For a small per object fee, S3 Intelligent-Tiering monitors access patterns and moves objects that have not been accessed for 30 consecutive days to the lower-cost infrequent access tier. This helps you reduce your S3 storage costs for objects you’re not accessing over time. If an object in the infrequent access tier is accessed later, it is automatically moved back to the frequent access tier – this occurs all within the S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage class. There are no retrieval fees when you use the S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage class, and no additional tiering fees when objects are moved between access tiers. Additionally, S3 Intelligent-Tiering has the same low latency and high throughput performance as the S3 Standard storage class.

By using File Gateway with S3 Intelligent-Tiering, customers can optimize their S3 storage costs automatically without any performance impact, all while reducing the operational overhead associated with managing their data. Thus, customers not only reduce their cloud storage costs, but also free up time they otherwise would have spent analyzing data access patterns trying to determine the most appropriate storage classes for their data.

When should I use S3 Intelligent-Tiering with File Gateway?

Use S3 Intelligent-Tiering when:

• You have long-lived data with unknown or changing access patterns
• You want to easily and automatically optimize your S3 storage costs
• You need the same low latency and high throughput performance as S3 Standard

Here are some factors to consider with S3 Intelligent-Tiering:

• Predictable access patterns: If your objects have very predictable access patterns, you should consider using other S3 storage classes to maximize storage cost savings and to avoid the small monthly monitoring and automation fee per object.
• Small objects: S3 Intelligent-Tiering has a minimum eligible object size of 128 KB for auto-tiering. Smaller objects may be stored but will always be charged at the frequent access tier rates. If you have a large percentage of objects smaller than 128 KB, you might want to keep them in S3 Standard to avoid incurring the additional monitoring and automation fee.
• Short-lived objects: S3 Intelligent-Tiering has a minimum storage duration charge of 30 days. If your objects are deleted before 30 days, the objects are still billed for a minimum of 30 days; therefore, we recommend using S3 Standard for short-lived objects.
• Pricing: Just like the other S3 storage classes, you pay for monthly storage, requests, and data transfer. Objects stored in the frequent access tier are billed at the same rate as S3 Standard. Objects stored in the infrequent access tier are billed at the same rate as Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA). With S3 Intelligent-Tiering, there is a small monthly per-object fee for monitoring and automation, so this means that the storage class becomes even more economical as object sizes grow.

How do I get started?

To get started, go to the AWS Management Console and select Storage Gateway. You must have a File Gateway already created and available for use. When you create a new file share or modify an existing file share, you now see S3 Intelligent-Tiering as a “Storage class for new objects” options in the share settings.

The following is a screenshot from the step where you select S3 Intelligent-Tiering in the file share creation wizard:

After you have created the file share with S3 Intelligent-Tiering as the storage class for new objects, you will see the following in the file share Details tab:

Step-by-step instructions can be found in the AWS Storage Gateway User Guide. This new feature is available for use in every Region where AWS Storage Gateway is available.

Summary

In this blog post, we discussed that File Gateway now supports the use of S3 Intelligent-Tiering as a storage class. We shared details about S3 Intelligent-Tiering, and the cost optimizations it provides. We also covered key considerations for deciding when to use S3 Intelligent-Tiering. Lastly, we showed you how to configure file shares using File Gateway to take advantage of this storage class to more efficiently store your data and optimize your storage costs. To learn more and get started with using S3 Intelligent-Tiering together with File Gateway, check out the following links:

• Get started with AWS Storage Gateway
• Blog: Automatic Cost Optimization for Amazon S3 via Intelligent Tiering
• Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering (S3 Intelligent-Tiering) Storage Class

Thanks for reading this blog post to learn how File Gateway now supports the use of S3 Intelligent-Tiering as a storage class. Please leave a comment in the comments section if you have any questions.