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Amazon S3 Glacier

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Amazon Glacier
Type of site
Online backup service
Available inEnglish
OwnerAmazon.com
URLaws.amazon.com/glacier/
CommercialYes
RegistrationRequired

Amazon Glacier is a low-cost online storage web service that provides reliable storage for data archiving and backup.[1]

Amazon Glacier is designed for data that is infrequently accessed and for which retrieval times of 3 to 5 hours are acceptable. Storage costs as little as $0.01 per gigabyte per month. Amazon hopes this new service will move businesses from on-premises tape backup drives to cloud-based backup storage.[2]

ZDNet says, that according to private e-mail, Glacier runs on "inexpensive commodity hardware components", which are suggested to be high numbers of high-capacity low-cost hard discs.[2] It is possible, that custom low-RPM hard drives are used in custom racks with proprietary logic.[3]

While an unlimited amount of data can be uploaded for storage, the pricing structure for downloading data (retrieval) is far more complex. Getting data out of Glacier is a two-step process. The first step is to retrieve the data from Glacier to regular S3 storage, subject to Glacier retrieval pricing. The next step is to actually download the data from the S3 storage. While Glacier advertises a free 5%/month allowance, this 5% is spread out evenly across the number of hours in a month for a 0.006944% free retrieval per hour (assuming a 30 day month). Exceeding the hourly allowance (aka peak hourly rate) at any time results in a peak retrieval overage charge that gets multiplied by the number of hours in a month.[4] In the more practical terms, Glacier users need to break up any sizeable retrievals across the longest period of time practical to eliminate or minimize overage charges. Developers who are planning to implement Glacier support in their applications also need to implement a mechanism for spreading out data retrieval over a long period of time, and to be extremely careful with their testing - a simple mistake or misunderstanding can easily result in a massive bill. In one example, a user stored 15GB of data in Glacier, retrieved 693MB for testing, and ended up being charged for 126GB due to retrieval rate calculation.[5]

Data transfer between AWS regions is free up to 1 GB per month, after which a sliding scale fee starts at $0.12 per GB.[6] Data stored in Glacier but which is deleted after being stored for a period of less than 3 months incurs a charge of $0.03 per GB, a move designed to discourage the service's use in cases where Amazon's other storage offerings (e.g. S3) are more appropriate for real-time access.

References

  1. ^ Mlot, Stephanie (August 21, 2012). "Amazon Launches Glacier Cloud Storage Service". PCMag.com. Ziff Davis, Inc. Retrieved 2012-08-21.
  2. ^ a b Clark, Jack (August 21, 2012). "Amazon launches Glacier cloud storage, hopes enterprise will go cold on tape use". ZDNet. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 2012-08-21.
  3. ^ http://www.zdnet.com/could-the-tech-beneath-amazons-glacier-revolutionise-data-storage-7000003144/
  4. ^ http://aws.amazon.com/glacier/faqs/#How_will_I_be_charged_when_retrieving_large_amounts_of_data_from_Amazon_Glacier
  5. ^ https://forums.aws.amazon.com/message.jspa?messageID=383204
  6. ^ http://aws.amazon.com/glacier/pricing/
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