AWS Glacier: Understanding Where Your Cold Cash Goes for Cloudy Storage

April 17, 2020

If you are into AWS, you may be interested in this quite interesting write up about the AWS allegedly lower-cost storage option. “How tricky is to save 20x with AWS Glaciers?” explains what some individuals have learned via trial and error.

The write up states that Amazon offers three kinds of Glacier services:

S3 object storage class “Glacier” (accessible via S3 API)

S3 object storage class “Glacier Deep Archive” (accessible via S3 API)

S3 Glacier Service (accessible via Glacier API)

The names, according to the source, are somewhat confusing. An alternative naming convention might be:

S3 Glacier

S3 Deep Glacier

Glacier Service

Okay, is that helpful?

The key point in the write up is that each type of services has its own conventions and pricing. The write up provides these suggestions for optimal use of Glacier’s variants:

  • Backups
  • Logs
  • Lossless versions of media files for (possible) future usage
  • Replacement of in-house magnetic tape archiving.

Amazon is working overtime to provide options. Presumably those who attend one or more of the training classes Amazon offers will understand the nuances.

DarkCyber thinks that Amazon has modified some of the telecommunications pricing tables popular among the Baby Bells when online was becoming a thing; namely, a question worthy of a Google engineer interview. Oh, wait. Google prices more transparently, right?

Stephen E Arnold, April 17, 2020

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