10x Your Storage Performance with Amazon S3 Express One Zone and Pulumi

At AWS re:Invent 2023, AWS introduced the Amazon S3 Express One Zone storage class, which significantly enhances performance by positioning S3 buckets closer to their associated workloads, achieving speeds up to 10 times faster than the S3 Standard storage class while reducing request costs by 50%. This service is particularly advantageous for data-intensive workloads like AI/ML, media, finance, real-time, and high-performance computing. The Express One Zone storage class operates within a single Availability Zone (AZ), which necessitates careful planning due to potential availability issues or data loss if the AZ becomes unavailable. Its unique features include a specific naming convention, region-specific endpoints, and the requirement for updated AWS CLI or SDK versions for bucket access. Currently, this storage class is available in select regions, with plans for expansion. The blog post also demonstrates how to create and manage Express One Zone buckets using Pulumi infrastructure as code, showcasing its ease in provisioning and managing resources. Benchmark tests revealed significant performance gains, with the Express One Zone class being notably faster, especially for small file operations, highlighting its efficiency and potential for further optimization through infrastructure as code.