While moving objects to colder storage classes like Glacier or Infrequent Access (IA) can reduce storage costs, premature transitions without analyzing historical access patterns can lead to unintended expenses. Retrieval charges, restore time delays, and early delete penalties often go unaccounted for in simplistic tiering decisions. This inefficiency arises when teams default to colder tiers based solely on perceived “age” of data or storage savings—without confirming access frequency, restore time SLAs, or application requirements. Unlike inefficiencies focused on *underuse* of cold storage, this inefficiency reflects *overuse* or misalignment, resulting in higher total costs or operational friction.
S3 is billed by storage class, with additional charges for data retrieval, API requests, and minimum storage durations in cold tiers. While cold storage (e.g., Glacier, Infrequent Access) offers lower per-GB storage pricing, retrieval costs and minimum duration charges can outweigh savings if access patterns are not well understood or if data is accessed frequently or unpredictably.
