A company stores large volumes of customer records in Amazon S3. Regulations require that new records be immediately accessible for the first 30 days; records older than 30 days are rarely accessed. How can the company minimize S3 storage costs while meeting this access requirement?

The correct answer is to apply a lifecycle policy to transition records to S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) storage after 30 days. This directly addresses the requirement for immediate access for 30 days, followed by infrequent access. S3 Standard-IA is cost-effective for data accessed less frequently but requiring rapid retrieval when needed. A lifecycle policy automates this transition, optimizing costs. Using S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage is a valid option for unknown or changing access patterns, but it might be slightly more expensive than a defined lifecycle policy when access patterns are clearly known, as in this scenario. Transitioning to S3 Glacier Deep Archive storage after 30 days would be too aggressive because it has retrieval times ranging from hours to days, which doesn't meet the "rarely accessed" but still accessible requirement. Using S3 Standard-IA for all records from the start would incur higher retrieval costs during the initial 30-day period when records are frequently accessed.