Many services share a small set of keys that clients read constantly — feature flags, pricing tables, session metadata. That is a pattern: latency and consistency matter more than multi-AZ durability for those hot objects.
S3 Express One Zone
Amazon S3 Express One Zone — single-AZ storage class optimized for consistent single-digit millisecond latency, used only with directory buckets.
S3 Express One Zone puts object storage
in a single Availability Zone next to your compute. You use a
directory-bucket
S3 bucket type that hosts the S3 Express One Zone storage class. Names follow bucket-base-name--zone-id--x-s3 and live in a single Availability Zone. and session-based
CreateSession
s3express:CreateSession — session-based auth for zonal (object-level) operations on a directory bucket. The SDK or CLI obtains temporary credentials scoped to that bucket before GET/PUT/LIST. auth so zonal GETs stay
in the single-digit millisecond range when the client is co-located.
| Standard general purpose | This lab (Express) | |
|---|---|---|
| Latency target | Good for most apps | Single-digit ms GET/PUT when same-AZ |
| Durability model | Multi-AZ | Single AZ (by design) |
| Auth for object ops | SigV4 as usual | CreateSession then zonal ops |
| Networking | Regional S3 endpoint | Regional + s3express gateway endpoint |
Create a dedicated VPC
CIDR 10.87.0.0/16, public subnet in the AZ that maps to
apse2-az1
Availability Zone ID — a unique, account-stable identifier such as apse2-az1. Directory bucket names and Express location config use the AZ ID, not the account-local AZ name (for example ap-southeast-2a)., IGW, and both S3
gateway endpoints
VPC gateway endpoint for private S3 access without a NAT gateway. This lab creates both com.amazonaws.ap-southeast-2.s3 and com.amazonaws.ap-southeast-2.s3express..
Create the buckets
Express directory bucket plus a Standard general-purpose bucket for the bakeoff.
IAM, EC2, and harness
Instance profile with CreateSession, m7g.large in that AZ,
seed keys, then run the harness
Docker container on the lab EC2 instance that continuously GETs the same keys from Express and Standard, exposes a dashboard on :8080, and reports p50/p90 latency ratios. on :8080.
Read the dash, then tear down
Compare p50/p90 ratios, then remove everything —
./scripts/demo.sh down and ./scripts/image.sh down.
| Expectation | Notes |
|---|---|
| Lab length | Under an hour once tooling is ready (verified this account) |
| Express AZ | Sydney has one Express AZ ID: apse2-az1 |
| Cost | Billable until lab and image stack are deleted |