Amazon announces RRS – lower cost, reduced durability cloud storage solution

Amazon announced a new option for its S3 cloud storage service that could change the game for online data management.

The new service is called RRS, for Reduced Redundancy Storage. Instead of the ultra-reliable storage offering that comes standard with S3 (an astounding 99.99999999% of reliability, though only 99.9% of availability), RRS promises 99.99% reliability. In this sense, reliability means durability and integrity (that the object will be intact in the exact form that you put it there originally). Amazon CTO Werner Vogels posted on the topic yesterday. Why would you ever want this? Price.

RRS starts off 33% cheaper than normal S3, making it much more attractive if you don’t need to the extreme levels of reliability. This could make Amazon storage a real option for a whole new class of data.