Difficulty: Easy
Description
We have identified Elastic File Systems (EFS) in your account that do not currently use the Intelligent-Tiering lifecycle management policy. EFS Intelligent-Tiering automatically moves infrequently accessed files to a lower-cost storage class, helping to reduce costs without impacting performance. We recommend enabling this policy for file systems with infrequent access patterns.
Selection Criteria
The EFS does not have an Intelligent-Tiering lifecycle policy enabled.
The EFS has been provisioned for at least 30 days and contains data (size > 0).
Expected Saving
EFS storage pricing by class (us-east-1):
Storage Class | Price/GB-month |
Standard | $0.30 |
Infrequent Access (IA) | $0.0165 |
Archive | $0.0085 |
Example : a 1 TB EFS with 80% of files infrequently accessed → ~$233/month savings after transition to IA.
⚠️ Retrieval fees : accessing files in IA costs $0.01/GB; Archive costs $0.03/GB. If files are accessed frequently after transition, retrieval fees may offset savings — verify access patterns before enabling.
Over time, we’ve observed that a typical object distribution tends to follow a 10% / 30% / 50% / 20% split per tier.
Pricing per Tier
Operational Impact
✅ No downtime — enabling a lifecycle policy is a configuration-only change with no impact on file availability or mount points.
Files moved to IA/Archive may have slightly higher first-byte latency (~tens of milliseconds) compared to Standard on first access.
⚠️ Retrieval fees apply when IA or Archive files are accessed — monitor access patterns to avoid unexpected costs.
Files automatically transition back to Standard upon access (configurable behavior).