The Challenge

The company was experiencing a steady increase in Amazon S3 storage costs without clear visibility into what was driving the growth. The team faced multiple challenges:

No single dashboard to check bucket-wise storage size on demand

Difficulty identifying which S3 buckets were consuming maximum storage

Lack of visibility into number of objects (documents) per bucket

No clear view of storage-class–wise data distribution

Inability to track day-by-day storage growth trends for forecasting

As data continued to grow, S3 costs were increasing month over month with limited optimisation controls.

Discovery

DevOps TechLab conducted a discovery workshop with Company’s technical and finance stakeholders to understand:

Current S3 usage patterns across all buckets

Nature of stored data (application data, backups, historical records)

Data access frequency and retention requirements

Existing cost visibility and reporting gaps

During discovery, it was identified that the bucket db-backup was:

One of the highest storage-consuming buckets

Storing all data in S3 Standard storage class

Accessed frequently only for the most recent 30 days of data

This made it an ideal candidate for immediate cost optimisation.

Onboarding

DevOps TechLab onboarded company to a structured S3 visibility and optimisation framework:

Enabled Amazon S3 Storage Lens across the AWS account

Configured advanced metrics for:

Bucket size

Object count

Storage-class distribution

Daily storage growth trends

Provided a centralized dashboard for real-time and historical insights

This onboarding gave company complete transparency into their S3 environment without requiring any application changes.

Operations & Support

After implementation, DevOps TechLab supported company with operational enablement:

Guided teams on interpreting Storage Lens dashboards

Helped identify ongoing growth patterns and cost risks

Ensured lifecycle policies were safely applied to existing and new objects

Validated data accessibility after storage class transition

Company can now independently monitor S3 usage and make informed storage decisions.

Optimisation & Advisory

Based on insights from Storage Lens, DevOps TechLab recommended and implemented targeted optimisation:

Retained last 30 days of backup data in S3 Standard

Transitioned older backup data to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval using lifecycle policies

Ensured zero impact on restore requirements and operational workflows

Business Impact:

Achieved more than USD 800 per month in S3 storage cost savings

Savings will continue to grow automatically as data volume increases

Improved cost predictability and budget planning

Conclusion – S3 Cost Optimisation Success

By enabling Amazon S3 Storage Lens and applying intelligent lifecycle policies, DevOps TechLab helped the client achieve:

Complete visibility into S3 storage usage

Data-driven cost optimisation

Automated storage tiering

Sustainable long-term cost savings

This approach ensures continuous optimisation and governance for any organization using Amazon S3.

About DevOps TechLab

DevOps TechLab is an AWS Advanced Partner specializing in cloud cost optimisation, storage governance, and operational visibility on AWS.

We help organizations:

Gain complete visibility into Amazon S3 usage and growth

Implement data-driven storage optimisation strategies

Reduce cloud costs without impacting application performance

Build scalable and audit-ready AWS environments

With over 200+ AWS projects delivered and 5,000+ professionals trained, DevOps TechLab supports businesses across SaaS, gaming, enterprise, and data-driven platforms in achieving sustainable and predictable cloud costs.