Storage Tiering & Auto Scaling

AWS provides storage tiering and auto-scaling features to help organizations like SecureCart optimize storage performance, scalability, and cost efficiency. By automating storage transitions and dynamically scaling resources, businesses can ensure they have the right storage at the right cost without overprovisioning.

✔ Why SecureCart Needs Storage Tiering & Auto Scaling?

• Dynamically adjusts storage based on access patterns to reduce costs.

• Enables cost savings by moving infrequently accessed data to lower-cost storage.

• Ensures storage scales automatically without manual intervention.

• Balances performance needs with cost efficiency.

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🔹 Step 1: Understanding AWS Storage Tiering Options

✔ AWS provides multiple storage tiers for balancing cost and performance:

Storage Tier	Purpose	Use Case	SecureCart Implementation
S3 Standard	High-performance storage for frequently accessed data.	Product images, web assets.	Stores SecureCart’s frequently accessed product images.
S3 Intelligent-Tiering	Automatically moves objects between hot and cold storage tiers based on access patterns.	Unpredictable access data.	Optimizes cost for SecureCart’s logs and reports.
S3 Standard-IA (Infrequent Access)	Lower-cost storage for data accessed less frequently.	Monthly reports, backups.	Stores SecureCart’s customer purchase history.
S3 Glacier & Glacier Deep Archive	Archival storage for long-term data retention.	Compliance records, cold data.	SecureCart archives old order data and security logs.
Amazon EFS Standard & Infrequent Access (IA)	Scalable file storage with a lower-cost option for infrequent access.	Shared application logs.	Optimizes SecureCart’s analytics workloads.
Amazon FSx (Lustre, Windows File Server)	Managed file storage with high-speed performance.	Windows applications, HPC workloads.	Stores SecureCart’s machine learning training data.

✅ Best Practices: ✔ Enable S3 Intelligent-Tiering to reduce costs on unpredictable workloads. ✔ Use S3 lifecycle policies to move objects to Glacier for archival storage. ✔ Use EFS Lifecycle Management to automatically transition files to IA storage.

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🔹 Step 2: SecureCart’s Storage Tiering & Auto Scaling Strategy

✔ How SecureCart implements automated tiering and scaling for storage efficiency:

Storage Type	Optimization Strategy	SecureCart Implementation
S3 Storage	Enable S3 Intelligent-Tiering to move objects to lower-cost tiers when not accessed.	Optimizes SecureCart’s website assets and logs dynamically.
EBS Volumes	Use GP3 instead of GP2 for better price-to-performance ratio and attach new storage as needed.	Optimizes SecureCart’s database storage costs.
EFS Storage	Enable automatic IA tiering to reduce storage costs for infrequent files.	Reduces SecureCart’s file system costs.
FSx for Windows	Enable data deduplication and compression to lower costs.	Reduces SecureCart’s Windows file server expenses.

✅ Best Practices: ✔ Classify data based on access patterns and retention policies. ✔ Regularly review and adjust lifecycle policies to avoid over-provisioning. ✔ Use storage cost monitoring tools like AWS Cost Explorer and S3 Storage Lens.

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🔹 Step 3: Enabling S3 Intelligent-Tiering & Measuring Cost Savings

What is S3 Intelligent-Tiering? S3 Intelligent-Tiering automatically moves objects between different access tiers based on access patterns. It helps businesses save costs by reducing storage prices for infrequently accessed objects without requiring manual intervention.

SecureCart’s Implementation:

• Enable S3 Intelligent-Tiering on logs, analytics, and historical transaction data.

• Monitor cost savings using AWS Cost Explorer to compare storage tiering expenses.

• Ensure large, infrequent files move to the Archive Access Tier for maximum savings.

✅ Best Practices: ✔ Use Intelligent-Tiering for unpredictable workloads (e.g., logs, infrequent reports). ✔ Measure savings with AWS Cost Explorer and adjust lifecycle policies accordingly. ✔ Enable object archival for deep cost reduction on long-term storage.

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🔹 Step 4: Comparing EBS Volume Types (gp3 vs. io2 vs. st1) for Workloads

EBS offers different volume types with varying performance and cost characteristics. SecureCart ensures cost efficiency by selecting the most appropriate EBS volume type based on its workload.

EBS Volume Type	Use Case	Performance	SecureCart Optimization Strategy
gp3 (General Purpose SSD)	Balanced cost-performance for most workloads.	Lower cost than gp2, same baseline performance.	Migrates SecureCart’s database storage from gp2 to gp3 for better price efficiency.
io2 (Provisioned IOPS SSD)	High-performance workloads with consistent IOPS.	High IOPS & low latency but expensive.	Used for SecureCart’s high-transaction OLTP database.
st1 (Throughput Optimized HDD)	Big data & log processing workloads.	Cost-effective, high throughput.	Used for SecureCart’s analytics batch processing storage.

✅ Best Practices: ✔ Use gp3 instead of gp2 for cost savings while maintaining performance. ✔ Reserve io2 only for mission-critical workloads that require high IOPS. ✔ Utilize st1 for workloads requiring high throughput but not low latency.

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🔹 Step 5: Implementing EFS Auto-Scaling for Cost Optimization

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) is a fully managed, scalable file storage that automatically adjusts capacity without manual intervention. SecureCart optimizes EFS storage costs by enabling auto-scaling and Infrequent Access (IA) tiering.

SecureCart’s Implementation:

• Enable automatic EFS IA tiering to reduce costs for inactive files.

• Configure CloudWatch alarms to monitor EFS storage growth and costs.

• Use auto-scaling to dynamically expand and shrink capacity as workloads fluctuate.

✅ Best Practices: ✔ Use EFS IA for cost-effective storage of infrequently accessed files. ✔ Monitor storage growth with CloudWatch to prevent unnecessary scaling costs. ✔ Leverage AWS Cost Explorer to measure savings from EFS auto-scaling.

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🔹 Step 6: Monitoring & Managing Storage Tiering & Auto Scaling

✔ SecureCart ensures efficient storage tiering and auto-scaling with AWS monitoring tools:

Monitoring Tool	Purpose	SecureCart Use Case
AWS Cost Explorer	Analyzes storage costs and identifies inefficiencies.	Identifies SecureCart’s high-cost storage regions.
S3 Storage Lens	Tracks bucket usage trends and recommendations.	Monitors SecureCart’s growing product catalog storage.
Amazon CloudWatch	Sends alerts on unexpected storage spikes.	Notifies SecureCart when EBS usage exceeds expected limits.

✅ Best Practices: ✔ Review storage costs with AWS Cost Explorer monthly. ✔ Enable S3 Storage Lens to get insights on object lifecycle trends. ✔ Set CloudWatch alarms for abnormal storage growth.

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🚀 Summary

✔ Enable S3 Intelligent-Tiering and track cost savings with AWS Cost Explorer. ✔ Use gp3 instead of gp2 for cost-efficient, high-performance EBS storage. ✔ Implement EFS Auto-Scaling and Infrequent Access tiering to minimize costs. ✔ Monitor storage growth and lifecycle transitions using AWS tools. ✔ Leverage CloudWatch and Storage Lens for proactive cost management.

Scenario:

SecureCart needs to optimize storage costs by automating tiering and auto-scaling storage resources.

Key Learning Objectives:

✅ Implement S3 Intelligent-Tiering for cost savings ✅ Select the right EBS Volume Type (SSD vs. HDD) for specific workloads ✅ Configure EFS Auto-Scaling to avoid over-provisioning

Hands-on Labs:

1️⃣ Enable S3 Intelligent-Tiering & Measure Cost Savings 2️⃣ Compare EBS Volume Types (gp3 vs. io2 vs. st1) for Workloads 3️⃣ Implement EFS Auto-Scaling for Cost Optimization

🔹 Outcome: SecureCart reduces costs by leveraging automated storage scaling and tiering.