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AWS Glacier

As explained in Amazon Web Services in Action, Third Edition: An in-depth guide to AWS

S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval is an Amazon S3 archival storage class that provides low-cost storage with retrieval times ranging from minutes to hours.

S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval is an Amazon S3 storage class for archiving objects at low storage cost when immediate access is unnecessary. The AWS CLI names this class GLACIER. Storage is inexpensive, but retrieval costs more and restored objects may take from minutes to hours to become available. section 7.4

A typical archival workflow is:

  • Create an S3 bucket for archived objects. section 7.4
  • Upload an object with --storage-class GLACIER, which selects S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval. section 7.4
  • Request restoration with aws s3api restore-object, choosing a restoration duration and retrieval tier. section 7.4
  • Check restoration status with aws s3api head-object; download the object after Restore reports that the request is no longer ongoing. section 7.4

Restoring an archived document

Archive a tax-statement PDF with `aws s3 cp --storage-class GLACIER`. A direct download fails because GLACIER objects cannot be downloaded immediately. Run `aws s3api restore-object`, inspect the object until restoration completes, and then copy it to the local machine. A five-year archive accessed fewer than five times illustrates when delayed retrieval can justify the lower storage cost. section 7.4

Table 7.1 Differences between storing data with S3 and Glacier (view table figure)

 

S3 Standard

S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval

S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval

S3 Glacier Deep Archive

Storage costs for 1 GB per month in US East (N. Virginia)

$0.023

$0.004

$0.0036

$0.00099

Costs for 1,000 write requests

$0.005

$0.02

$0.03

$0.05

Costs for retrieving data

Low

High

High

Very High

Accessibility

Milliseconds

Milliseconds

1–5 minutes/3–5 hours/5–12 hours

12 hours/48 hours

Durability objective

99.999999999%

99.999999999%

99.999999999%

99.999999999%

Availability objective

99.99%

99.9%

99.99%

99.99%

Compare S3 Standard, S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval, S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval, and S3 Glacier Deep Archive by storage price, retrieval cost, access delay, durability, and availability. section 7.4

How Amazon Web Services in Action, Third Edition: An in-depth guide to AWS covers it

How deep it goes
Works through storage-class trade-offs and the complete CLI cycle from upload through restoration, status checking, download, and cleanup.
Examples
Uses a five-year document archive and a tax-statement PDF to demonstrate delayed retrieval and restoration.
What it assumes
Assumes basic S3 object-storage knowledge and introduces archival storage through concrete AWS CLI commands.
What you can do after
Operate/configure archival S3 objects with AWS CLI commands for uploading, restoring, checking, downloading, and deleting them.
How it connects
Connects S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval with S3 buckets, storage classes, object restoration, AWS CLI, and retrieval tiers.
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Related concepts

This explainer was generated by Manning's knowledge graph from the text of Amazon Web Services in Action, Third Edition: An in-depth guide to AWS. The section links point to the parts of the book it draws on.