S3 Glacier Deep Archive: Amazon’s Cheapest Cloud Storage
During re:Invent 2018, Amazon Web Services announced that they would be aiming to deliver the cheapest cloud storage possible. Recently, Amazon Web Services has unveiled the lowest cost storage in the cloud — S3 Glacier Deep Archive.
The storage option is insanely cheap. The cost for S3 Glacier Deep Archive storage is just $0.00099 per gigabyte or $1 per terabyte, per month.
Amazon Web Services notes that the S3 Glacier is a “secure, durable and extremely low-cost cloud storage service for data-archiving and long-term backup.”
Part of the Deep Archive’s allure lies in the capabilities, as expected from Amazon. According to Amazon Web Services, it has:
- 99.999999999% durability
- Comprehensive security
- Compliance capabilities
- Stringent regulatory requirements
- Query-in-place functionality
The cheap price and extensive capabilities are aimed at companies who want to move away from off-site archives or magnetic data tapes. Instead of keeping them in storage for rare future access, companies are looking for a way to store massive amounts in the cloud — for cheap.
As Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services, explained to re:Invent audiences in November 2018, “You have to be out of your mind to manage your own tape moving forward.”
The Amazon G3 Glacier is offering three options for archive access, ranging from very fast to relatively lowly. Their three options are as follows: expedited takes 1-5 minutes to access, standard takes 3-5 hours to access, and bulk takes 5-12 hours to access.
As Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec, Amazon Web Services’ VP of S3, said: “S3 Glacier Deep Archive costs just a dollar per terabyte per month and opens up rarely accessed storage for analysis whenever a business needs it, without having to deal with the infrastructure or logistics of tape access.”
With Amazon’s G3 Glacier Deep Archive, the future of cloud storage is here.
