2.3.4. Amazon S3 Glacier (Archival Storage)

💡 First Principle: Amazon S3 Glacier provides extremely low-cost, highly durable, and secure storage for long-term data archiving, enabling businesses to meet compliance requirements and retain data cost-effectively.

Amazon S3 Glacier and S3 Glacier Deep Archive are secure, durable, and extremely low-cost Amazon S3 storage classes for data archiving and long-term backup. They are designed for data that is rarely accessed (cold data) but needs to be retained for extended periods.

Key Characteristics of Amazon S3 Glacier:

• Extremely Low Cost: The lowest cost storage option in AWS, optimized for data that can tolerate retrieval times of minutes to hours.
• High Durability: Designed for 99.999999999% (11 nines) of durability, similar to Amazon S3 Standard.
• Archival Use Case: Ideal for long-term data archiving, regulatory compliance, media asset archives, and scientific data.
• Retrieval Options: Offers flexible retrieval options ranging from minutes (Expedited) to hours (Standard, Bulk), with varying costs.
• S3 Glacier Deep Archive: An even lower-cost option within Glacier, designed for data that is accessed once or twice a year, with retrieval times typically within 12 hours.
• Integration with S3 Lifecycle Policies: Data is often moved to Glacier automatically from other S3 storage classes using lifecycle policies as it ages and becomes less frequently accessed.

Scenario: A company needs to store historical customer data and legal documents for 7 years for compliance purposes. This data is rarely accessed, but it must be retained in a highly durable and extremely cost-effective manner.

Reflection Question: How does Amazon S3 Glacier, by providing extremely low-cost and highly durable storage with flexible retrieval times, fundamentally enable businesses to meet long-term data archiving needs and compliance requirements cost-effectively?