A gaming company stores player-generated screenshots in S3 with unpredictable access patterns: some are viewed constantly right after upload, others are never opened again. They move all screenshots to S3 Intelligent-Tiering. Which statement about this storage class is correct?
- There are per-GB retrieval fees whenever an object moves back to the Frequent Access tier
- There are no retrieval fees, and small monitoring and automation fees apply per object instead
- Objects must be manually moved between tiers using a lifecycle rule
- Every object smaller than 128 KB is rejected by the storage class
Correct answer: B. There are no retrieval fees, and small monitoring and automation fees apply per object instead
S3 Intelligent-Tiering is designed to optimise storage costs for data with unknown or changing access patterns by automatically moving objects between access tiers at the object level, and AWS documentation states plainly that there are no retrieval fees for S3 Intelligent-Tiering; instead, a small monthly monitoring and automation fee is charged per object, which makes the second option correct. The first option is wrong because retrieval fees are exactly what this storage class avoids, unlike Standard-IA or One Zone-IA. The third option is wrong because the whole point of Intelligent-Tiering is that S3 monitors access patterns and moves objects between the Frequent Access, Infrequent Access, and Archive Instant Access tiers automatically, without any lifecycle rule or manual action required. The fourth option is also wrong: objects smaller than 128 KB are not rejected, they are simply not monitored for tiering and remain in the Frequent Access tier by default, still fully stored and accessible.
Source: AWS S3 documentation: Understanding and managing Amazon S3 storage classes — S3 Intelligent-Tiering fees and automatic tier movement