Amazon S3 Glacier Price Reduction

by Jeff Barr, chief evangelist, AWS (Amazon Web Services)

The Amazon S3 Glacier storage class is for data archiving and long-term backup of information that will be accessed at least once per quarter (Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive is a better fit for data that is seldom accessed).

It stores data across 3 Availability Zones (AZs), each physically separated from the others by a meaningful distance, but no more than 100km (60miles). You can store your archives and backups for as little as $4 per terabyte per month, and then choose between three retrieval options (Expedited, Standard, and Bulk) when you need access.

Our customers use this storage class for media asset workflows, archiving of healthcare and financial services data that is subject to retention requirements, scientific data storage, digital preservation, and as a replacement for magnetic tape. To learn more, check out our case studies from Nasdaq, Reuters, Teespring, BandLab, and Celgene.

Now more cost-effective
In addition to being durable and secure, the S3 Glacier storage class is now more cost-effective. Effective March 1, 2021, we are lowering the charges for PUT and Lifecycle requests to S3 Glacier by 40% for all AWS Regions. This includes the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions, the AWS China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet, and the AWS China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD. Check out the Amazon S3 Pricing page for more information.

You can use the S3 PUT API to directly store compliance and backup data in S3 Glacier. You can also use S3 Lifecycle policies to save on storage costs for data that is rarely accessed:

If you are ready to build a comprehensive backup or archiving system, be sure to check out our Backup and Restore page and look at the products and services offered by the AWS Storage Competency Partners.