Amazon Glacier is considered as a cloud storage platform developed and launched by AWS with longer retrieval times. Under this, a developer is meant to use Amazon Glacier for the purpose of moving the less accessible data to archive storage for saving costs on storage. The archiving solutions were available earlier at a high cost, and along with that, the companies had to determine the capacity requirement as well. This was hampering the entire functionality with several drawbacks such as under-utilized capacity and unwanted money expenditures. Therefore, Amazon Glacier took over this hassle and brought in a convenient and cheaper solution for data backup and archiving. For more information please visit https://www.whizlabs.com/blog/what-is-amazon-glacier/

1. What Is Amazon Glacier?

3. Introduction to
Amazon Glacier
Amazon Glacier is considered as a cloud storage
platform developed and launched by AWS with
longer retrieval times. Under this, a developer is
meant to use Amazon Glacier for the purpose of
moving the less accessible data to archive storage
for saving costs on storage.
Therefore, Amazon Glacier took over this hassle and
brought in a convenient and cheaper solution for
data backup and archiving. There is more to it that
you will get to know while you continue with this
article further.
In which the size of glacier archives ranges
between 1 byte to 40 terabytes. In short, there is no
limit to uploading data into an archive or creating
several archives within AWS Glacier. There is a
dedicated multipart upload feature for high
reliability and throughput upon the archives that
are above the size of 100MB.

4. Revolutionary Ways
of Amazon Glacier
These ways give the AWS users are allowed to
group the archives in specific vaults and manage
their accessibility through AWS Identity and Access
Management (IAM).
A host can be assigned to each of the vaults, and
notification policies can also be implemented with
it. It is solely upon the AWS admin to execute the
resource-based access policy for each vault of
archives. Hence, the accessibility limits can also be
set for the hosts permissible to access selected
archives.
Along with the vaults of archives, there is a feature
named ‘vault lock’ under which compliance can be
set for each of them. Once a lock is initiated,
Amazon Glacier implements given configurations
for meeting the compliance standards.

5. Pricing Policy of Amazon
Glacier
Amazon Glacier has a very subtle pricing policy
under which it charges for every one gigabyte of
storage used per month. Uploading the data to
Amazon Glacier is free, while the platform charges
only for the retrieval requests. It is implemented as
such to prevent the customers from solely
depending upon Amazon Glacier for their general
data storage needs and use it only as storage of
archives infused with infrequently used data.

7. Use Cases of Amazon Glacier
Storage has always been a core necessity
within an IT infrastructure. Every business
today revolves around data in one way or
the other. Therefore, it is quite important
for people to store data on priority for
long-term needs.
There are certain requirements embedded
with a specific set of data. It means that
some data is required to be readily
accessible at most times while some data is
not required frequently. Therefore, putting
such data in cold storage such as Glacier is
a smarter option.

9. 1. Data Archiving for Regulatory
Purposes
Businesses are facing the necessity of
archiving data for several compliance
regulations. It is mostly required within the
healthcare industry as the patient data is to
be stored in large numbers for a long
period of time. There cannot be any
vulnerability in the storage of such
sensitive data. But, the cost of storing the
data of such an amount for over decades or
more might be extremely high.

11. 2. Replacement of
Magnetic Tapes
The tape libraries are still being used in some
applications, irrespective of whether they are
stored on-premises or off-site. Hence, these
storage aspects are costly and require
maintenance over time to ensure security and
reliability. Amazon Glacier is considered to be
one of the ideal replacement options as it is
integrated as a managed service.

13. 3. Backup & Restore
for Emergency
Situations
Disaster Recovery planning is quite important
when you are dealing with or storing sensitive
data. It is a crucial part of running a business
and ensuring protection during any
emergency data crisis. It does not matter
whether you are running your business
environment over AWS cloud or any other
hybrid cloud solution; Glacier can help you
secure your data in the form of a backup
without charging much from you.

14. 4. Digital Media
Archiving
The companies that are dealing with
digital media such as news footage, large
movie, gaming projects, important
clippings, and others need to store these
media or archive them for the long run in
order to use them in future scenarios.
Digital media is mostly of a bigger size,
such as gigabytes or terabytes.

15. 5. Amazon Glacier
Deep Archive
Solutions
Amazon Glacier is working on improving
the products and introducing new
features. Therefore, AWS Glacier Deep
Archive has been introduced for users
who are demanding very long-term
storage solutions at low pricing. With the
Deep Archive feature, the data can be
stored cost-effectively for over a decade
or more.

17. Conclusion These are a few of the things that define
the usability of AWS Glacier for the
businesses that deal with sensitive data
that are to be stored for a long period of
time. Today, Amazon Glacier is termed to
be a top-tier storage solution that is
secure and durable with its services.

18. THANKS