AWS Storage Update – S3 & Glacier Price Reductions + Additional Retrieval Options for Glacier

Back in 2006, we launched S3 with a revolutionary pay-as-you-go pricing model, with an initial price of 15 cents per GB per month. Over the intervening decade, we reduced the price per GB by 80%, launched S3 in every AWS Region, and enhanced the original one-size-fits-all model with user-driven features such as web site hosting, VPC integration, and IPv6 support, while adding new storage options including S3 Infrequent Access.

Because many AWS customers archive important data for legal, compliance, or other reasons and reference it only infrequently, we launched Glacier in 2012, and then gave you the ability to transition data between S3, S3 Infrequent Access, and Glacier by using lifecycle rules.

Today I have two big pieces of news for you: we are reducing the prices for S3 Standard Storage and for Glacier storage. We are also introducing additional retrieval options for Glacier.

S3 & Glacier Price Reduction
As long-time AWS customers already know, we work relentlessly to reduce our own costs, and to pass the resulting savings along in the form of a steady stream of AWS Price Reductions.

We are reducing the per-GB price for S3 Standard Storage in most AWS regions, effective December 1, 2016. The bill for your December usage will automatically reflect the new, lower prices. Here are the new prices for Standard Storage:

As you can see from the table above, we are also simplifying the pricing model by consolidating six pricing tiers into three new tiers.

We are also reducing the price of Glacier storage in most AWS Regions. For example, you can now store 1 GB for 1 month in the US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), or Europe (Ireland) Regions for just $0.004 (less than half a cent) per month, a 43% decrease. For reference purposes, this amount of storage cost $0.010 when we launched Glacier in 2012, and $0.007 after our last Glacier price reduction (a 30% decrease).

The lower pricing is a direct result of the scale that comes about when our customers trust us with trillions of objects, but it is just one of the benefits. Based on the feedback that I get when we add new features, the real value of a cloud storage platform is the rapid, steady evolution. Our customers often tell me that they love the fact that we anticipate their needs and respond with new features accordingly.

New Glacier Retrieval Options
Many AWS customers use Amazon Glacier as the archival component of their tiered storage architecture. Glacier allows them to meet compliance requirements (either organizational or regulatory) while allowing them to use any desired amount of cloud-based compute power to process and extract value from the data.

Today we are enhancing Glacier with two new retrieval options for your Glacier data. You can now pay a little bit more to expedite your data retrieval. Alternatively, you can indicate that speed is not of the essence and pay a lower price for retrieval.

We launched Glacier with a pricing model for data retrieval that was based on the amount of data that you had stored in Glacier and the rate at which you retrieved it. While this was an accurate reflection of our own costs to provide the service, it was somewhat difficult to explain. Today we are replacing the rate-based retrieval fees with simpler per-GB pricing.

Our customers in the Media and Entertainment industry archive their TV footage to Glacier. When an emergent situation calls for them to retrieve a specific piece of footage, minutes count and they want fast, cost-effective access to the footage. Healthcare customers are looking for rapid, “while you wait” access to archived medical imagery and genome data; photo archives and companies selling satellite data turn out to have similar requirements. On the other hand, some customers have the ability to plan their retrievals ahead of time, and are perfectly happy to get their data in 5 to 12 hours.

Taking all of this in to account, you can now select one of the following options for retrieving your data from Glacier (The original rate-based retrieval model is no longer applicable):

Standard retrieval is the new name for what Glacier already provides, and is the default for all API-driven retrieval requests. You get your data back in a matter of hours (typically 3 to 5), and pay $0.01 per GB along with $0.05 for every 1,000 requests.

Expedited retrieval addresses the need for “while you wait access.” You can get your data back quickly, with retrieval typically taking 1 to 5 minutes.  If you store (or plan to store) more than 100 TB of data in Glacier and need to make infrequent, yet urgent requests for subsets of your data, this is a great model for you (if you have less data, S3’s Infrequent Access storage class can be a better value). Retrievals cost $0.03 per GB and $0.01 per request.

Retrieval generally takes between 1 and 5 minutes, depending on overall demand. If you need to get your data back in this time frame even in rare situations where demand is exceptionally high, you can provision retrieval capacity. Once you have done this, all Expedited retrievals will automatically be served via your Provisioned capacity. Each unit of Provisioned capacity costs $100 per month and ensures that you can perform at least 3 Expedited Retrievals every 5 minutes, with up to 150 MB/second of retrieval throughput.

Bulk retrieval is a great fit for planned or non-urgent use cases, with retrieval typically taking 5 to 12 hours at a cost of $0.0025 per GB (75% less than for Standard Retrieval) along with $0.025 for every 1,000 requests. Bulk retrievals are perfect when you need to retrieve large amounts of data within a day, and are willing to wait a few extra hours in exchange for a very significant discount.

If you do not specify a retrieval option when you call InitiateJob to retrieve an archive, a Standard Retrieval will be initiated. Your existing jobs will continue to work as expected, and will be charged at the new rate.

To learn more, read about Data Retrieval in the Glacier FAQ.

As always, I am thrilled to be able to share this news with you, and I hope that you are equally excited!

If you want to learn more- we have a webinar coming up December 12th. Register here.

— Jeff;