Amazon Glacier is a game-changer. The world of data backups and archiving has never been the same. Amazon Web Services does all the heavy lifting for data retention. You pay nothing upfront and pay a very low storage price. You can also scale up or down your usage as needed. Amazon Glacier is considered a top-tier storage option, which is both long-lasting and stable.
Data archiving can be expensive. Companies must pay a large upfront cost for their archiving solution. This does not include ongoing costs such as staffing, power, facilities, staffing, maintenance, or other operational expenses. Second, organizations need to estimate their capacity requirements. Therefore, they will overprovision to ensure that they have enough capacity for data redundancy or unforeseen expansion. These conditions lead to underutilization of capacity.
What is Amazon Glacier?
Amazon Glacier is a low cost storage solution that provides long-term, safe storage for data backup and preservation. It is best suited for data that is rarely retrieved and for which retrieval times of several hours are acceptable to keep costs down. Amazon Glacier can be used to store large or small amounts of data. It is designed to last 99.999999999% and can meet all regulatory requirements.
Customers can store data for as little as $1 per Terabyte per Month, which is a significant cost savings over traditional on-premises options. Amazon Glacier offers three access options for archives. These range from a few minutes up to several hours. S3 Glacier Deep Archive offers two access options. These access options range from 12 to 48 hours. This allows customers to keep costs low and meet a variety retrieval needs.
AWS Glacier Terminology:
Before you move on, be sure to familiarize yourself with the AWS Glacier Terminology.
1. Archives
Amazon S3 Glacier stores data in an “archive”. An archive can contain any type of content including documents and photographs. You can archive one file or combine multiple files into a ZIP or TAR file and upload it as one archive.
Archives in AWS Glacier are identical to objects in S3. One archive could be as large as 40 Terabytes.
You can save unlimited archives and data to your account. Each archive is assigned a unique archive ID at the time of creation. The archive’s content is immutable once it is created.
2. Vaults
Vaults are virtual data storage boxes. S3 buckets are similar to vaults in AWS Glacier.
The AWS Management Console will display a list of all vaults. You can also use the AWS SDKs (to create vaults or delete vaults), lock vaults and show vault information, get vault inventory and tag vaults for filtering and configure vault alerts.
Access policies can be used to allow or restrict certain actions for users within each vault. Vaults can also be region-specific.
What are the main features of AWS Glacier
AWS Glacier’s key features include:
1. Data Retrieval
To meet your various access and cost requirements, Amazon S3 Glacier offers Bulk, Standard, and Expedited retrievals. Standard retrievals can take between 3-5 hours and expedited retrievals can be available in as little as 1-5 minutes.
2. Amazon S3 Glacier Select
Amazon S3 Glacier Select allows you to query the data stored without having to access the entire archive. S3 Glacier Select is a great way to save money and gain insight from your archive data.
3. Vault Lock
Amazon S3 Glacier Vault Lock allows you to create compliance restrictions on individual S3 Glacier vaults. You can put in restrictions such as “Write once, Read Many” (WORM), and lock the policy to prevent future revisions with a Vault Lock policy. Once the policy is locked, it becomes permanent. Amazon S3 Glacier will enforce the controls necessary to meet your compliance goals.
4. Access control
AWS Identity and Access Management by Amazon S3 Glacier allows you to securely monitor AWS access and your Amazon S3 Glacier data.
5.Tagging support
Tags are labels you can use to identify and associate your vaults. Using tags also adds filtering capabilities to operations like AWS cost reports. Amazon S3 Glacier allows for you to tag your S3 Glacier vaults, making it easier to manage resource and cost.
6. Audit logs
AWS CloudTrail tracks Amazon S3 Glacier API requests for your account and delivers log files to you. This facilitates audit logging using Amazon S3 Glacier. These log files provide insight into your Amazon assets.
“Why Choose Amazon Glacier?”
Amazon Glacier is a redundant storage system that stores data on multiple devices and uses multiple facilities to protect it. AWS Glacier also has a Data Integrity Test that monitors the Glacier’s data on a regular basis. Here are some reasons to use AWS Glacier.
Durability and Scalability
Amazon Glacier runs on the largest international cloud infrastructure. It has 99.999999999% durability. Data is automatically distributed within an AWS Region across at least three geographically separate Availability Zones.
Quick Retrieval
Amazon Glacier offers three retrieval options that will suit your needs. Because they deliver data in a matter of minutes, expedited retrievals are great for Active Archive use cases. Standard retrievals take approximately 3-5 hours to complete. They are great for tasks that require less time, such as media editing or backup data. Bulk retrievals are the most economical option. Large amounts of data can be returned within 5 to 12 hours.
Comprehensive Security & Compliance Capabilities
Amazon S3 Glacie