Lifecycle Policy Savings Calculator

Work out lifecycle policy savings instantly with clear inputs, formula shown and shareable results.

About Lifecycle Policy Savings Calculator

Lifecycle policies work because most data is written once and read rarely afterwards, so the steady-state distribution across tiers depends on growth rate and transition ages. With modest growth, the overwhelming majority of a bucket ends up in the coldest tier, which is where the saving comes from — often 70 percent or more of the standard-storage bill.

Formula

Tier distribution

hot TB ~ monthly new data x transition days / 30.44; remainder distributes to IA and archive by their transition ages; cost = sum of TB x per-tier rate

Worked example

With the default values below, Lifecycle Policy Savings Calculator returns Monthly saving from lifecycle policies of $7,681.67. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.

Inputs used

Data volumeminimum 0.001 TB: 500 TB
Days before moving to infrequent accessminimum 1 days: 30 days
Days before moving to archiveminimum 1 days: 180 days
Monthly data growthaccepts 0–100 %: 6 %

Results

Monthly saving from lifecycle policies: $7,681.67
Cost with lifecycle tiering: $3,818.33
Cost if everything stayed in standard: $11,500.00
Cost reduction: 66.8%

Step by step

1Values used
2Tier distribution
3Monthly saving from lifecycle policies= 7,681.67
4Cost with lifecycle tiering= 3,818.33
5Cost if everything stayed in standard= 11,500.00
6Cost reduction= 66.8

Assumptions and limits

The result is derived only from the 4 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
In particular, this calculator does not take inflation, tax, fees or charges or compounding frequency into account.
Figures are rounded for display to 2 decimal places, so totals built from several rounded parts can differ slightly from the unrounded arithmetic.

How these calculators are built and tested is described on the Methodology page. If a figure looks wrong, please report it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are transition requests charged?

Yes, per object. For buckets with hundreds of millions of small objects, transition request charges can exceed the storage saving, which argues for filtering by object size.

What transition ages work well?

Thirty days to infrequent access is the usual minimum, and 90 to 180 days to archive. Match them to real access patterns from access logs rather than guessing.