Final answer:
S3 Analytics - Storage Class Analysis is an Amazon S3 feature that helps users manage and analyze their object storage to optimize costs by suggesting more cost-effective storage classes for data based on access patterns.
Step-by-step explanation:
What is S3 Analytics - Storage Class Analysis?
S3 Analytics - Storage Class Analysis is a feature within Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) that assists users in understanding and making decisions about their storage usage. Specifically, it provides detailed reports on the analytics of objects stored over time, enabling users to analyze access patterns and transition the right objects to the most cost-effective class of storage. Thus, it helps optimize costs by recommending when to transition objects to other classes, such as S3 Infrequent Access, S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access, or S3 Glacier, which are designed for less frequently accessed data but offer lower storage costs.
Storage Class Analysis monitors data access patterns for a user-defined period, such as 30, 60, or 90 days, and informs the user if certain objects can be moved to a different storage class to save on costs. Users can visualize their storage usage with a dashboard and obtain recommendations for data that could be transitioned without impacting performance. This tool is especially useful for large-scale users of S3 who want to effectively manage their data archiving and lifecycle policy decisions.