Posted On: Nov 30, 2021

The Amazon S3 Glacier storage class is now named Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval, and now includes free bulk retrievals in addition to a 10% price reduction, making it optimized for use cases such as backup and disaster recovery. S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval is now even more cost-effective, and the free bulk retrievals make it ideal for when you need to retrieve large data sets once or twice per year and do not want to worry about the retrieval cost.

S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval delivers low-cost storage for archive data that is retrieved asynchronously. S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval delivers the most retrieval speed options that balance cost with access times ranging from minutes to hours, and with free bulk retrievals. It is an ideal solution for backup, disaster recovery, offsite data storage needs, and for when some data needs to be occasionally retrieved in minutes. S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval is designed for 99.999999999% (11 9s) of data durability by redundantly storing your objects on multiple devices across a minimum of three AWS Availability Zones in an AWS Region.

S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval is one of three Amazon S3 Glacier storage classes that are optimized for archive data with a variety of uses cases from user-generated content to media archives to analytics to genomics to compliance archives. For archive data that needs immediate access, such as medical images, news media assets, or genomics data, choose the S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval storage class, a new archive storage class that delivers the lowest cost storage with milliseconds retrieval. For archive data that does not require immediate access, such as backups and disaster recovery, choose S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval (formerly S3 Glacier), with flexible data retrieval options from minutes to hours. You can choose from expedited retrievals in 1-5 minutes, standard retrievals in 3-5 hours, and free bulk retrievals in 5-12 hours. To save even more on long-lived archive storage such as regulatory and compliance data and digital media preservation, choose the S3 Glacier Deep Archive storage class, the lowest cost storage in the cloud (less than $1 per TB-month) with data retrieval from 12-48 hours.

The Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval 10% storage price reduction and free bulk retrievals are effective December 1, 2021, in all AWS Regions, including the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions, the AWS China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet, and the AWS China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD.

To learn more, read the AWS News blog post, visit the storage classes page, the S3 pricing page, and watch the video. To get started, visit the S3 console.

In addition to this announcement, Amazon S3 has reduced storage prices up to 31% in S3 Standard-Infrequent Access, and S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access across 9 AWS Regions, read the blog post for more information.