A media company moves a 2 GB video file to S3 Standard-IA to reduce storage cost. After only 10 days, a producer requests the file be permanently deleted. What should the company expect regarding cost?
- No extra charge, since the object is being deleted rather than transitioned
- A pro-rated charge for the remaining days of the 30-day minimum storage duration
- A one-time early-deletion penalty equal to a full year of storage
- The deletion is blocked until the 30-day minimum duration has elapsed
Correct answer: B. A pro-rated charge for the remaining days of the 30-day minimum storage duration
S3 Standard-IA carries a minimum storage duration of 30 days. AWS documentation states that objects deleted, overwritten, or transitioned to a different storage class before 30 days incur the normal storage usage charge for the days the object was actually stored, plus a pro-rated charge for the remainder of the 30-day minimum, so the second option correctly describes this. The first option is wrong because deletion is treated the same as early transition for billing purposes; there is no exemption just because the action is a delete rather than a move. There is no separate flat annual penalty fee defined anywhere in S3's pricing model, so the third option invents a charge that does not exist. Finally, the minimum duration is a billing construct, not an operational lock: S3 never prevents a user from deleting or overwriting an object early, it simply still bills for the unused portion of the minimum period, making the fourth option incorrect.
Source: AWS S3 documentation: Understanding and managing Amazon S3 storage classes — S3 Standard-IA minimum storage duration and early-deletion billing