Amazon S3 and Glacier Storage Tiers and Retrieval Options

Amazon S3 offers a range of storage tiers to suit different needs, including Standard, Intelligent-Tiering, Standard-IA, One Zone-IA, and Glacier.

S3 Standard is the most frequently accessed tier, with a 99.99% availability SLA and a 3x redundancy model.

S3 Intelligent-Tiering automatically moves data between storage classes based on access patterns.

Standard-IA and One Zone-IA offer lower storage costs than S3 Standard, with a lower availability SLA.

Glacier is designed for long-term data archiving, with a lower cost per GB than S3 Standard-IA.

Glacier offers two retrieval options: Expedited and Standard, with Expedited being faster but more expensive.

S3 and Glacier are two storage options offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). S3 is a general-purpose storage service that allows you to store and serve large amounts of data.

S3 Glacier is a low-cost storage class designed for long-term data archiving. It's suitable for data that's rarely accessed, such as backups and historical records.

You can transition data from S3 to S3 Glacier using AWS Storage Gateway, which can reduce storage costs by up to 75%. This is a significant advantage over directly moving data to S3 Glacier.

The correct answer for the scenario where an organization needs to back up data for 10 years is to use AWS Storage Gateway to backup the data and transition it to Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive. This option is more cost-effective than the others.

Here are the main differences between S3 and S3 Glacier:

Vaults in Amazon S3 Glacier are region specific, which means you can't access or manage them across different regions.

You'll need to give each vault a unique name within your account and the region where it's created.

Deleting a vault is only possible if there are no archives in it and no new data has been written since the last inventory update.

You can retrieve information about a vault, such as its creation date, archive count, and total size.

Glacier updates the vault inventory approximately once a day, and downloading it is an asynchronous operation.

You can assign metadata to your vaults using tags, which are key-value pairs that you define.

Here are some key facts about Glacier vaults:

To achieve faster restores for S3 Glacier restore objects, requests must be submitted using Amazon S3 Batch Operations and the STANDARD retrieval tier.

The STANDARD retrieval tier is the default option for retrieval requests that do not specify the retrieval option.

Restore requests incur retrieval fees, but S3 Intelligent-Tiering Standard retrieval and restore requests are free of charge.

Standard retrievals are flexible and economical, and do not require EXPEDITED credits to facilitate more rapid restores.

For S3 Glacier object restore service expectations, see Archive retrieval options.

To create a storage class for faster restores, you can use Amazon S3 Batch Operations and the STANDARD retrieval tier.

Here are the supported Amazon S3 storage classes for Faster Restores for S3 Glacier:

Note that Commvault recommends using Commvault Combined Storage Tier when using Amazon S3 Glacier asynchronous storage classes.

The two main storage classes for Amazon S3 Glacier are the classic S3 Glacier class and S3 Glacier Deep Archive.

Here's a comparison of the two:

The most cost-effective option to implement a cloud storage solution for long-term retention of data is to use AWS Storage Gateway to backup the data and transition it to Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive.

Data retrieval from Amazon S3 Glacier and S3 Glacier Deep Archive takes longer than standard Amazon S3 storage, but prices vary depending on the speed you need.

Expedited retrievals take a few minutes to access the data, priced at $0.03 per GB and $0.01 per request, making it the fastest and most expensive option. Standard retrievals make your data accessible within 3-5 hours, priced at $0.01 per GB and $0.05 per 1000 requests. Bulk retrievals are the slowest option, taking 5-12 hours before your data is accessible, priced at $0.0025 per GB and $0.025 per 1,000 requests.

You can retrieve data from Glacier using AWS CLI, but you'll need to wait for 1 day after storing data into Glacier, as it takes 12-24 hours to create a Vault.

You can upload files directly to Amazon S3 Glacier, bypassing standard S3 storage, starting from 2018 with S3 PUT to Glacier.

There are several ways to do this, including using AWS Tools for PowerShell, the AWS CLI, or MSP360 Backup.

To use AWS Tools for PowerShell, set your BucketName and File parameter to match the desired bucket and file you want.

Using the AWS CLI, you can upload a file to Amazon S3 Glacier with the command: aws s3 cp myfile.jpg s3://my-bucket --storage-class GLACIER.

You can also use MSP360 Backup to upload directly to Amazon S3 Glacier, as mentioned in the article.

Here are the tools you can use to upload files directly to S3 Glacier:

Each of these tools offers a convenient way to upload files directly to S3 Glacier, making it easier to manage your data storage.

You can retrieve files from Amazon S3 Glacier in minutes, hours, or even days, depending on the storage class and retrieval option chosen.

Expedited retrievals take a few minutes to access the data and are priced at $0.03 per GB and $0.01 per request.

Standard retrievals make your data accessible within 3-5 hours and are priced at $0.01 per GB and $0.05 per 1000 requests.

Bulk retrievals are the slowest option and usually take 5-12 hours before your data is accessible, priced at $0.0025 per GB and $0.025 per 1,000 requests.

The S3 Glacier Deep Archive has two options for retrieval time: Standard tier with the retrieval time of up to 12 hours and Bulk tier with the retrieval time of up to 48 hours.

You can also use the Instant Retrieval storage class for retrieving data that is rarely accessed but requires retrieval in milliseconds.

The Flexible Retrieval storage class offers three options: Expedited Retrieval, Standard Retrieval, and Bulk Retrieval, with retrieval times ranging from 1-5 minutes to 5-12 hours.

To initiate restore, you can click on the "Initiate restore" box or go to Object actions menu → initiate restore.

You can specify the number of days for how long you want your data to be available, after which it will again be archived.

Expedited Retrieval is the fastest option, restoring data within 1-5 minutes if it's less than 250MB, but it will cost you more than other options.

The costs for restoring data will be affected by the size of the data, the restore speed used, and the retention time specified.

You can upgrade the speed of a Glacier restore whenever it takes too long by making a new restore request on the same object.

Here's a summary of the retrieval options and their prices:

Amazon S3 and Glacier offer a range of pricing options to suit different needs.

Data storage in S3 Glacier is charged per GB per month, with Glacier Deep Archive being the most cost-effective option at $0.00099 per month for a gigabyte of data. This works out to just $1.01 per month for a terabyte of data.

You'll also be charged for retrieval operations, including retrieve requests and data transferred out of Glacier. The cost depends on the data access tier you choose: Expedited, Standard, or Bulk.

Here's a breakdown of the costs for retrieval operations:

Keep in mind that there's a minimum storage duration for both S3 Glacier and Glacier Deep Archive: 90 days and 180 days, respectively. If you delete your data too quickly, you'll be charged a prorated fee.

Pricing is a crucial factor to consider when deciding on a storage solution. You're charged per GB per month of storage in Amazon S3 Glacier.

The cost of storage varies depending on the data access tier. You'll be charged for retrieval operations such as retrieve requests and the amount of data retrieved, depending on the tier – Expedited, Standard, or Bulk.

Upload requests are also charged, so keep that in mind when planning your storage needs. Data transferred out of Glacier will also incur a charge.

Here's a comparison of the costs of storing a terabyte of data in different tiers:

Keep in mind that there's a charge if you delete data within 90 days in S3 Glacier, and 180 days in S3 Glacier Deep Archive. If you delete your data too quickly, you'll be charged a prorated fee of $0.012 per GB for S3 Glacier, or $0.00099 per month for S3 Glacier Deep Archive.

Under a single AWS account, you can have up to 1000 vaults in Amazon S3 Glacier. This is a significant limit, but it's worth noting that it's not uncommon for businesses to have multiple accounts for different purposes.

Having multiple vaults can be useful for organizing your data, but it's essential to keep in mind that each vault will incur separate storage and retrieval costs.