Unveiling Amazon S3 Express One Zone: A High-Performance Storage Class
In a significant announcement at re:Invent 2023, Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduced a revolutionary storage class known as Amazon S3 Express One Zone. This new offering is specifically designed for high-demand applications that require extremely fast data retrieval times. By leveraging a single Availability Zone (AZ), Amazon promises consistent single-digit millisecond data access, making it a compelling option for businesses dealing with latency-sensitive applications and frequently accessed data.
Enhanced Speed and Performance
The S3 Express One Zone boasts data access speeds up to ten times faster than the traditional S3 Standard. It supports a remarkable 2 million GET transactions per second (TPS) and up to 200,000 PUT TPS per directory bucket. This capability positions it as an ideal solution for applications that demand high performance, such as interactive data analytics, data streaming, media rendering and transcoding, high-performance computing (HPC), and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) training.
Several organizations have already benefited from adopting S3 Express One Zone. For instance, Fundrise has reported accelerated investment data processing. Aura has improved database performance by using the service for caching. Lyrebird, Vivian Health, and Fetch have also seen enhancements in performance and cost reductions for their data-intensive workloads.
New Features and Functionalities
Since its launch, AWS has rolled out several features to enhance the customer experience with S3 Express One Zone. One notable feature is the object expiration using S3 Lifecycle, which allows users to automatically expire objects based on their age, optimizing storage costs. Additionally, applications such as log-processing or media-broadcasting can now append new data directly to existing objects and access them instantly, all within the S3 Express One Zone.
Price Reductions: A Game Changer
AWS has announced a significant reduction in pricing for S3 Express One Zone, effective from April 10, 2025. This includes a 31% reduction in storage prices, a 55% cut in PUT request prices, and an 85% decrease in GET request prices. Furthermore, the costs for data uploads and retrievals have been slashed by 60%, and these charges now apply to all bytes transferred, rather than just those exceeding 512 KB.
Here’s a quick comparison of the price reductions in the US East (N. Virginia) Region:
- Storage (per GB-Month): Previously $0.16, now $0.11 (31% reduction)
- Writes (PUT requests): Previously $0.0025 per 1,000 requests up to 512 KB, now $0.00113 per 1,000 requests (55% reduction)
- Reads (GET requests): Previously $0.0002 per 1,000 requests up to 512 KB, now $0.00003 per 1,000 requests (85% reduction)
- Data Upload (per GB): Previously $0.008, now $0.0032 (60% reduction)
- Data Retrievals (per GB): Previously $0.0015, now $0.0006 (60% reduction)
Broader Availability and Resources
These price reductions are applicable across all AWS Regions offering the S3 Express One Zone storage class, including US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Europe (Ireland), and Europe (Stockholm). For more detailed information on pricing, users can refer to the Amazon S3 pricing page and the AWS Documentation.
Try and Share Your Experience
AWS encourages users to experience S3 Express One Zone by accessing the S3 console and sharing feedback through AWS re:Post for Amazon S3 or their usual AWS Support contacts.
Conclusion
Amazon S3 Express One Zone represents a significant advancement in cloud storage solutions, offering unprecedented speed and cost efficiency. As businesses continue to manage vast amounts of data, solutions like these are essential for optimizing performance and reducing costs. Whether you’re involved in AI/ML, media processing, or any other data-intensive field, exploring what S3 Express One Zone has to offer could be a beneficial step towards enhancing your operations.
For further reading and more specific use case examples, you can visit the official AWS Blog.
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