Features of AWS Glacier
- Given the extremely cheap storage, provided by AWS Glacier, it doesn’t provide as many features as AWS S3. Access to data in AWS Glacier is an extremely slow process.
- Just like S3, AWS Glacier can essentially store all kinds of data types and objects.
- Durability: AWS Glacier, just like Amazon S3, claims to have a 99.9999999% of durability (11 9’s). This means the possibility of losing your data stored in one of these services one in a billion. AWS Glacier replicates data across multiple Availability Zones for providing high durability.
- Data Retrieval Time: Data retrieval from AWS Glacier can be as fast as 1-5 minutes (high-cost retrieval) to 5-12 hours(cheap data retrieval).
- AWS Glacier Console: The AWS Glacier dashboard is not as intuitive and friendly as AWS S3. The Glacier console can only be used to create vaults. Data transfer to and from AWS Glacier can only be done via some kind of code. This functionality is provided via:
- AWS Glacier API
- AWS SDKs
- Region-specific costs: The cost of storing data in AWS Glacier varies from region to region.
- Security:
- AWS Glacier automatically encrypts your data using the AES-256 algorithm and manages its keys for you.
- Apart from normal IAM controls AWS Glacier also has resource policies (vault access policies and vault lock policies) that can be used to manage access to your Glacier vaults.
- Infinite Storage Capacity: Virtually AWS Glacier is supposed to have infinite storage capacity.
What is Amazon Glacier?
AWS offers a wide range of storage services that can be provisioned depending on your project requirements and use case. AWS storage services have different provisions for highly confidential data, frequently accessed data, and not-so-frequently accessed data. You can choose from various storage types namely, object storage, file storage, block storage services, backups, and data migration options. All of which fall under the AWS Storage Services list.
AWS Glacier: From the aforementioned list, AWS Glacier, is the backup and archival storage provided by AWS. It is an extremely low-cost, long-term, durable, secure storage service that is ideal for backups and archival needs. In a lot of its operations AWS Glacier is similar to S3, and, it interacts directly with S3, using S3-lifecycle policies. However, the main difference between AWS S3 and Glacier is the cost structure. The cost of storing the same amount of data in AWS Glacier is significantly less as compared to S3. Storage costs in Glacier can be as little as $1 for one petabyte of data per month.
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