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Amazon S3

Amazon S3 Glacier storage classes

Long-term, secure, durable storage classes for data archiving at the lowest cost and milliseconds access

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Overview

The Amazon S3 Glacier storage classes are purpose-built for data archiving, providing you with the highest performance, most retrieval flexibility, and the lowest cost archive storage in the cloud. All S3 Glacier storage classes provide virtually unlimited scalability and are designed for 99.999999999% (11 nines) of data durability. The S3 Glacier storage classes deliver options for the fastest access to your archive data and the lowest-cost archive storage in the cloud.

You can choose from three archive storage classes optimized for different access patterns and storage duration. For archive data that needs immediate access, such as medical images, news media assets, or genomics data, choose the S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval storage class, an archive storage class that delivers the lowest cost storage with milliseconds retrieval. For archive data that does not require immediate access but needs the flexibility to retrieve large sets of data at no cost, such as backup or disaster recovery use cases, choose S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval, with retrieval in minutes or free bulk retrievals in 5-12 hours. To save even more on long-lived archive storage such as compliance archives and digital media preservation, choose S3 Glacier Deep Archive, the lowest cost storage in the cloud with data retrieval within twelve hours.

S3 Glacier storage classes getting started tutorial

Benefits

How it works: S3 Glacier storage classes

Overview

The Amazon S3 Glacier storage classes are purpose-built for data archiving, providing you with the highest performance, most retrieval flexibility, and the lowest cost archive storage in the cloud. You can now choose from three archive storage classes optimized for different access patterns and storage duration.

Diagram explaining Amazon S3 Glacier storage classes for archival data, highlighting Instant Retrieval, Flexible Retrieval, and Deep Archive options with varying cost and retrieval times.

Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval

S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval delivers the lowest cost storage, up to 68% lower cost (than S3 Standard-Infrequent Access), for long-lived data that is accessed once per quarter and requires millisecond retrieval. It is designed for rarely accessed data that still needs immediate access in performance-sensitive use cases like image hosting, online file-sharing applications, medical imaging and health records, news media assets, and satellite and aerial imaging. S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval offers the high durability, high throughput, and similar low latency of S3 Standard-IA, with a lower per-GB storage price and slightly higher per-GB retrieval price. S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval is designed for 99.999999999% (11 9s) of data durability and 99.9% availability by redundantly storing data across multiple physically separated AWS Availability Zones in a given year.

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Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval

S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval delivers low-cost storage, up to 10% lower cost (than S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval), for archive data that is accessed 1-2 times per year and is retrieved asynchronously. S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval is the ideal storage class for archive data that does not require immediate access but needs the flexibility to retrieve large sets of data at no cost, such as backup or disaster recovery use cases. S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval delivers the most flexible retrieval options that balance cost with access times ranging from minutes to hours and with free bulk retrievals. It is an ideal solution for backup, disaster recovery, offsite data storage needs, and for when some data needs to occasionally retrieved in minutes, and you don’t want to worry about costs. S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval is designed for 99.999999999% (11 9s) of data durability and 99.99% availability by redundantly storing data across multiple physically separated AWS Availability Zones in a given year.

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Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive

S3 Glacier Deep Archive delivers the lowest cost storage, up to 75% lower cost (than S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval), for long-lived archive data that is accessed less than once per year and is retrieved asynchronously. At just $0.00099 per GB-month (or $1 per TB-month), S3 Glacier Deep Archive offers the lowest cost storage in the cloud, at prices significantly lower than storing and maintaining data in on-premises tape or archiving data off-site. S3 Glacier Deep Archive is a cost-effective and easy-to-manage alternative to tape. It is designed for customers — particularly those in the financial services, healthcare, media and entertainment and public sector — that retain data sets for 7-10 years or longer to meet customer needs and regulatory compliance requirements. S3 Glacier Deep Archive is designed for 99.999999999% (11 9s) of data durability and 99.99% availability by redundantly storing data across multiple physically separated AWS Availability Zones in a given year.

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Use cases

S3 Glacier customers

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Learn how Snap optimizes cost savings while storing over 1.5 trillion photos and videos on Amazon S3 Glacier Instant RetrievalLearn more
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Learn how Electronic Arts optimizes storage costs and operations using Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering and the S3 Glacier storage classesLearn more
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Learn how Electronic Arts optimizes storage costs and operations using Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering and the S3 Glacier storage classes »Learn more
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Learn how NASCAR modernizes their multi-PB media archive at speed with AWS StorageLearn more
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Learn how Warner Bros. uses S3 Glacier to preserve the world’s most important and extensive collections of movies and televisionLearn more
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Learn how CNN uses S3 Glacier to support daily news productionLearn more
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Learn how PGA Tour is using archived data in S3 Glacier to create an entirely new experience for their fans »Learn more
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Learn how Pinterest uses S3 Glacier Deep Archive to manage storage for its visual discovery engineLearn more

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Learn how Conan O'Brien's team archives and preserves 25 years of late night legacy on AWSLearn more
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Learn how Ryanair saves 65% in backup costs by switching tape backups to the cloud using AWS Storage Gateway and storing them in S3 GlacierLearn more
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Learn how Qube Cinema takes movies from stage to screen faster on AWSLearn more
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Learn how BandLab decreases costs and improves availability using Amazon S3Learn more
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Learn how Sysco reduces storage costs by over 40% by archiving to S3 GlacierLearn more
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Learn how Amagi uses S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval to optimize media storage costsLearn more
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Learn how SysCloud reduces costs and increases performance at scale for SaaS data backups on AWSLearn more
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Learn how Webair addresses unique backup needs with AWS Storage Gateway and S3 Glacier Deep ArchiveLearn more

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Joyn readies exclusive content for audiences with Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering and Amazon S3 GlacierLearn more
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Reuters builds easily accessible large-scale news archives on Amazon S3 Glacier »Learn more
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CloudWave modernizes EHR disaster recovery and provides fast, secure access to archived imaging data on AWSLearn more
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King Hamad University Hospital and Bahrain Oncology Center use Amazon S3 to store millions of medical imagesLearn more
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Ancestry uses Amazon S3 Glacier to restore terabytes of images in mere hours instead of days »Learn more
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How Canva saves over $3 million annually in Amazon S3 costs using S3 Glacier Instant RetrievalLearn more
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The BBC uses Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval to preserve 100 years of history »Learn more
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Learn how Photobox optimizes storage costs for over 12 billion photos with Amazon S3 Glacier Instant RetrievalLearn more

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Learn how Nasdaq uses Amazon S3 lifecycle policies to archive data to S3 Glacier and meet regulatory compliance requirementsLearn more
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Learn how Indus OS transitioned billions of small objects to archive storage and saved 75% on costsLearn more
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Rock & Roll Hall of Fame preserves rock music history and modernizes on AWS »Learn more

S3 Glacier blogs

Displaying 1-8 (158)
2016-11-22

AWS Storage Update – S3 & Glacier Price Reductions + Additional Retrieval Options for Glacier

Back in 2006, we launched S3 with a revolutionary pay-as-you-go pricing model, with an initial price of 15 cents per GB per month. Over the intervening decade, we reduced the price per GB by 80%, launched S3 in every AWS Region, and enhanced the original one-size-fits-all model with user-driven features such as web site hosting, [...]
2015-09-25

Amazon Glacier Update – Third-Party SEC 17a-4(f) Assessment for Vault Lock

Amazon Glacier is designed to store any amount of archival or backup data with high durability. Amazon Glacier is a very cost-effective solution (as low as $0.007 per gigabyte per month) for data that is infrequently accessed, and where a retrieval time of several hours is acceptable. Earlier this year we introduced a new Amazon [...]
2015-09-17

AWS Storage Update – New Lower Cost S3 Storage Option & Glacier Price Reduction

Like all AWS services, the Amazon S3 team is always listening to customers in order to better understand their needs. After studying a lot of feedback and doing some analysis on access patterns over time, the team saw an opportunity to provide a new storage option that would be well-suited to data that is accessed [...]
2015-08-23

Create Write-Once-Read-Many Archive Storage with Amazon Glacier

August 23, 2023: This post has been updated for clarity to provide the best experience for our readers. Many AWS customers use Amazon Glacier for long-term storage of their mission-critical data. They benefit from Glacier’s durability and low cost, along with the ease with which they can integrate it in to their existing backup and [...]
2015-06-22

New – Tag Your Amazon Glacier Vaults

Amazon Glacier is a secure, durable, and extremely low-cost storage service for data archiving and online backup (see my post, Amazon Glacier: Archival Storage for One Penny Per GB Per Month for an introduction). Since we introduced Glacier in the summer of 2012, we have made it even more useful by adding lifecycle management, data [...]
2015-04-27

New – Glacier Vault Access Policies

Amazon Glacier provides secure and durable data storage at extremely low cost (as little as $0.01 per gigabyte per month). Each item stored in Glacier is known as an archive, and can be as large as 40 terabytes. Archives are stored in vaults, each of which can store as many archives as desired. Today we [...]
2015-01-05

AWS GovCloud (US) Update – Glacier, VM Import, CloudTrail, and More

I am pleased to be able to announce a set of updates and additions to AWS GovCloud (US). We are making a number of new services available including Amazon Glacier, AWS CloudTrail, and VM Import. We are also enhancing the AWS Management Console with support for Auto Scaling and the Service Limits Report. As you [...]
2014-12-11

Data Retrieval Policies and Audit Logging for Amazon Glacier

Amazon Glacier is a secure and durable storage service for data archiving and backup. You can store infrequently accessed data in Glacier for as little as $0.01 per gigabyte per month. When you need to retrieve your data, Glacier will make it available for download within 3 to 5 hours. Today we are launching two [...]