Amazon Web Services has cut some S3 Glacier prices by 40 per cent, AWS Chief Evangelist Jeff Barr revealed yesterday.
“We are lowering the charges for PUT and Lifecycle requests to S3 Glacier by 40 per cent for all AWS Regions… Check out the Amazon S3 Pricing page for more information,” he wrote.
A PUT request moves S3 data into Glacier. A Lifecycle request migrates data from one S3 storage class to another, with the aim of saving storage costs. S3 does not transition objects smaller than 128 KB because it’s not cost effective.
“You can use the S3 PUT API to directly store compliance and backup data in S3 Glacier. You can also use S3 Lifecycle policies to save on storage costs for data that is rarely accessed,” Barr wrote.
We could not immediately discern how to compare the before and after prices, and have asked AWS for specifics. On its Amazon S3 pricing page, AWS notes “there are per-request ingest fees when using PUT, COPY, or lifecycle rules to move data into any S3 storage class.“
However, these fees are not displayed – and so there is no simple way to find out how much S3 Glacier PUT and Lifecycle requests cost. Customers are told to estimate their costs using an AWS pricing calculator. But this estimates prices for all AWS services, including S3 Glacier, based on your proposed usage.
Update: AWS told us: “The price reduction for PUTs and Lifecycle transitions requests for S3 Glacier reduced prices by 40 per cent in all AWS Regions. For example, for US East (Ohio) Region we reduced the price from $0.05 down to $0.03 per 1,000 requests for all S3 Glacier PUTs and Lifecycle transitions.”
The basic Glacier storage costs of $0.004/GB/month remain unchanged.
