S3 Glacier

  • Archival Storage Tiers:

    • S3 Glacier is used for long-term infrequently accessed data.

    • S3 Glacier Deep Archive is the lowest-cost storage option for archival data that is rarely accessed (e.g., once or twice a year).

  • Use Cases:

    • Ideal for compliance, digital preservation, backups, media archives, and long-term retention.

  • Storage Classes:

    • S3 Glacier (retrieval in minutes to hours)

    • S3 Glacier Deep Archive (retrieval in hours)

  • Retrieval Options for Glacier:

    • Expedited: 1–5 minutes (small data, premium cost)

    • Standard: 3–5 hours

    • Bulk: 5–12 hours (lowest cost)

  • Retrieval Options for Glacier Deep Archive:

    • Standard: 12 hours

    • Bulk: 48 hours

  • No Lifecycle Transition Delay:

    • Objects moved via S3 lifecycle policies are immediately placed into the Glacier tier; retrieval delays apply only when accessing them.

  • S3 Intelligent-Tiering:

    • Can automatically move data to Archive Access or Deep Archive Access tiers to optimize costs, without retrieval charges for access patterns.

  • Restore Process:

    • Glacier objects must be restored before access; a temporary copy is made available in the S3 Standard tier for the specified duration.

  • Object Lock and Compliance:

    • Supports WORM (Write Once, Read Many) for regulatory compliance using S3 Object Lock.

  • Data Retrieval Cost Model:

    • You pay for storage, retrieval, and data transfer out.

    • Retrieval charges vary by the retrieval method and amount of data.

  • Vaults vs. Buckets:

    • Classic Glacier (before S3 integration) used vaults; now S3 Glacier uses S3 buckets with Glacier storage class.

  • Glacier Archives:

    • In classic Glacier (vaults), each file is stored as an archive with a unique ID.

  • Lifecycle Policies:

    • Use S3 Lifecycle rules to automate transitions to Glacier tiers based on object age or prefixes.

  • Data Durability:

    • Offers 99.999999999% (11 nines) durability like S3 Standard.

  • Cross-Region Replication Support:

    • S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) can be configured with Glacier tiers to replicate archived data across AWS Regions for compliance and DR.

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