tier

The parameter tier to assign to a parameter.

Parameter Store offers a standard tier and an advanced tier for parameters. Standard parameters have a content size limit of 4 KB and can't be configured to use parameter policies. You can create a maximum of 10,000 standard parameters for each Region in an Amazon Web Services account. Standard parameters are offered at no additional cost.

Advanced parameters have a content size limit of 8 KB and can be configured to use parameter policies. You can create a maximum of 100,000 advanced parameters for each Region in an Amazon Web Services account. Advanced parameters incur a charge. For more information, see Standard and advanced parameter tiers in the Amazon Web Services Systems Manager User Guide.

You can change a standard parameter to an advanced parameter any time. But you can't revert an advanced parameter to a standard parameter. Reverting an advanced parameter to a standard parameter would result in data loss because the system would truncate the size of the parameter from 8 KB to 4 KB. Reverting would also remove any policies attached to the parameter. Lastly, advanced parameters use a different form of encryption than standard parameters.

If you no longer need an advanced parameter, or if you no longer want to incur charges for an advanced parameter, you must delete it and recreate it as a new standard parameter.

Using the Default Tier Configuration

In PutParameter requests, you can specify the tier to create the parameter in. Whenever you specify a tier in the request, Parameter Store creates or updates the parameter according to that request. However, if you don't specify a tier in a request, Parameter Store assigns the tier based on the current Parameter Store default tier configuration.

The default tier when you begin using Parameter Store is the standard-parameter tier. If you use the advanced-parameter tier, you can specify one of the following as the default:

  • Advanced: With this option, Parameter Store evaluates all requests as advanced parameters.

  • Intelligent-Tiering: With this option, Parameter Store evaluates each request to determine if the parameter is standard or advanced. If the request doesn't include any options that require an advanced parameter, the parameter is created in the standard-parameter tier. If one or more options requiring an advanced parameter are included in the request, Parameter Store create a parameter in the advanced-parameter tier.This approach helps control your parameter-related costs by always creating standard parameters unless an advanced parameter is necessary.

Options that require an advanced parameter include the following:

  • The content size of the parameter is more than 4 KB.

  • The parameter uses a parameter policy.

  • More than 10,000 parameters already exist in your Amazon Web Services account in the current Amazon Web Services Region.

For more information about configuring the default tier option, see Specifying a default parameter tier in the Amazon Web Services Systems Manager User Guide.