storage
70 articles on storage — what drives the cost, how it is priced, and where the savings actually are.
GCP Filestore basic vs enterprise cost: choosing the right tier
Filestore comes in tiers from Basic HDD to Enterprise, with per-gigabyte prices that vary several-fold and minimum capacities that set a cost floor. Here is how the tiers compare on cost and which fits your file workload.
EBS gp2 vs gp3: why gp3 is almost always cheaper
gp3 is the newer general-purpose EBS volume type, and for most workloads it costs about 20 percent less than gp2 while delivering baseline performance that gp2 could only reach at large sizes. Here is why, and when to migrate.
EBS io2 vs gp3: paying for guaranteed IOPS
io2 and io2 Block Express are the high-end EBS volume types built for demanding databases, with high durability and very high provisioned IOPS. gp3 covers most needs far more cheaply. Here is when io2's premium is worth it.
EBS snapshot cost creep: the storage bill that never stops growing
EBS snapshots are cheap individually but accumulate silently: automated backups, forgotten manual snapshots, and orphaned volumes pile up until snapshot storage rivals or exceeds your live volume cost. Here is how to find and stop the creep.
EFS vs EBS cost: shared file storage vs attached block storage
EBS is block storage attached to one instance; EFS is a shared file system many instances mount at once. EFS costs more per GB but removes provisioning and scaling overhead. Here is how to choose on cost and fit.
Is S3 really free to start? The free tier and what comes after
S3 has a genuine free tier for the first year, but requests, data transfer out, and storage class choices shape the bill the moment you outgrow it. Here is what the free tier covers and what actually drives S3 cost.
S3 Intelligent-Tiering explained: automatic storage cost savings
S3 Intelligent-Tiering moves objects between access tiers automatically based on usage, cutting storage cost for data with unknown or changing access patterns, for a small monitoring fee. Here is how it works and when to use it.
S3 lifecycle policies cost savings: aging data to cheaper storage
S3 lifecycle policies automatically transition objects to cheaper storage classes and expire them on a schedule, cutting storage cost for data with a known access pattern. Here is how to design policies that save without losing what you need.
S3 request cost surprise: when API calls beat storage on the bill
S3 charges per request, not just per GB stored, so a workload making millions of small GET, PUT, or LIST calls can pay more for requests than for storage. Here is why it happens and how to cut request cost.
S3 storage classes cost compared: picking the cheapest tier
S3 offers storage classes from Standard to Glacier Deep Archive, trading storage price against retrieval cost and latency. Matching each object to the right class is a major cost lever. Here is how the classes compare.
Azure Blob storage tiers cost: hot, cool, cold, and archive compared
Azure Blob storage offers hot, cool, cold, and archive access tiers at very different prices, trading storage cost against access cost and retrieval latency. Matching data to the right tier can cut storage spend dramatically. Here is how.
The cost of object storage compared: S3, GCS, and Blob Storage
Object storage bills for stored GB, requests, and data retrieval or egress, with storage classes that trade retrieval cost for lower storage price. Here is how S3, Google Cloud Storage, and Azure Blob compare and how to pick the right tier.
Amazon FSx cost explained: pricing the managed file systems
Amazon FSx offers four managed file systems (Windows, Lustre, NetApp ONTAP, OpenZFS), each priced differently for capacity, throughput, and IOPS. Costs vary widely by type and deployment. Here is how FSx pricing works and how to choose the cheapest fit.
GCP storage classes cost: Standard, Nearline, Coldline, Archive
Google Cloud Storage has four classes trading storage price against retrieval cost and minimum durations. Standard is cheapest to access, Archive cheapest to store. Here is how the classes are priced and how to pick the right one for each data set.
Glacier vs Deep Archive cost: which S3 cold tier to choose
S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval, Glacier Instant Retrieval, and Glacier Deep Archive trade storage price against retrieval speed and cost. Deep Archive is the cheapest storage at around a dollar per TB per month. Here is how the cold tiers compare and when to use each.
Log retention cost strategy: keeping logs without the surprise bill
Logs are cheap to write and expensive to keep forever. A retention strategy that tiers, expires, and archives logs by value cuts storage and ingestion cost without losing what you actually need. Here is how to build one.
AWS DataSync cost: about a cent and a quarter per gigabyte
DataSync bills about $0.0125 per GB of data copied, plus any underlying storage and transfer at the endpoints. Cost tracks how much you move, so incremental transfers and filters keep it down. Here is the simple model.
AWS Transfer Family cost: per-hour endpoints plus data transferred
Transfer Family bills about $0.30 per hour for each enabled protocol endpoint (SFTP, FTPS, FTP) plus about $0.04 per GB uploaded and downloaded. The always-on endpoint fee is the surprise for low-volume use. Here is the breakdown.
GCP Filestore cost: you pay for provisioned capacity by tier
Filestore bills per GB-month of provisioned capacity by tier (Basic HDD, Basic SSD, Zonal, Enterprise), with tier minimums. You pay for the capacity you allocate, not what you use, so tier and size choice drive the bill. Here is how to pick.
Artifact storage cost: build outputs add up quietly
Build artifacts, packages, and container images accumulate in storage, billed per GB, and unpruned artifacts grow the bill quietly. Retention policies, pruning, and tiering keep it flat. Here is how.
Data lake cost optimization: storage tiers and query efficiency
A data lake's cost is object storage (often huge volumes) plus the query engines that read it. Storage tiering, lifecycle policies, compaction, and efficient formats cut it. Here is how to keep a growing lake affordable.
Azure NetApp Files cost: provisioned capacity by service level
Azure NetApp Files bills provisioned capacity pool size per hour by service level (Standard, Premium, Ultra), which set throughput per TB. You pay for the pool whether or not it is full, so right-sizing capacity and tier is the lever.
Azure Files cost: tiers, transactions, and provisioned premium
Azure Files bills by tier, transaction-optimized, hot, and cool (pay per GB stored plus transactions), or premium (provisioned capacity with bundled performance). Matching tier to access pattern and using premium only when needed are the levers.
GCP Hyperdisk cost: pay for capacity, IOPS, and throughput separately
Hyperdisk is GCP's newer block storage that decouples capacity, IOPS, and throughput, so you provision and pay for each independently. This flexibility avoids over-buying, but over-provisioning any dimension wastes money. Here is the model.