Amazon S3 Glacier
- What it is
- The archival storage classes within Amazon S3 — lowest storage cost, in exchange for retrieval time and retrieval fees.
- The three classes
- S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval — millisecond retrieval, for archives accessed maybe once a quarter. Minimum 90-day storage.
- S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval — retrieval in minutes (expedited) to 5–12 hours (bulk, free). Minimum 90 days.
- S3 Glacier Deep Archive — cheapest storage in AWS. Retrieval in 12–48 hours. Minimum 180-day storage. For 7–10 year compliance retention.
- Vault Lock
- Write-once-read-many (WORM) policy that can be locked permanently, satisfying regulatory retention rules.
- Exam signal
- “Compliance archive, rarely accessed, cheapest possible” → Deep Archive.
- “Archive but must be instantly available” → Instant Retrieval.
- Get there automatically
- Use lifecycle policies to transition objects from Standard to Glacier by age.