The lowest-cost archive storage with milliseconds retrieval for rarely accessed data

Overview

Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval is an archive storage class that delivers the lowest-cost storage for long-lived data that is rarely accessed and requires retrieval in milliseconds. With S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval, you can save up to 68% on storage costs compared to using the S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) storage class, when your data is accessed once per quarter. S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval delivers the fastest access to archive storage, with the same throughput and milliseconds access as the S3 Standard and S3 Standard-IA storage classes. S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval is designed for 99.999999999% (11 nines) of data durability and 99.9% availability by redundantly storing data across multiple physically separated AWS Availability Zones. It is designed for rarely accessed data that still needs immediate access in performance-sensitive use cases like image hosting, online file-sharing applications, medical imaging and health records, news media assets, and genomics.

Benefits

Retrievals in milliseconds

Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval delivers the same low latency and high throughput performance as the S3 Standard and S3 Standard-IA storage classes, making it ideal for storing data like medical images, genomic sequences, satellite images, news media assets, and user-generated content that require milliseconds access.

Unmatched durability and scalability

Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval runs on the world’s largest global cloud infrastructure with virtually unlimited scalability and is designed for 99.999999999% (11 nines) of durability. Data is automatically distributed across multiple Availability Zones that are geographically separated within an AWS Region.

Most comprehensive security and compliance capabilities

Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval offers integration with AWS CloudTrail to log, monitor, and retain storage API call activities for auditing, and it supports three different forms of encryption. S3 also supports security standards and compliance certifications, including SEC Rule 17a-4, PCI-DSS, HIPAA/HITECH, FedRAMP, EU GDPR, and FISMA. Amazon S3 Object Lock enables WORM storage capabilities, helping satisfy compliance requirements for virtually every regulatory agency around the globe.

Easily manage your data lifecycle

Cost-effectively manage data through its lifecycle across the S3 storage classes, which share the S3 APIs. You can use S3 Lifecycle to easily transition your data to lower-cost storage classes, as its data becomes less frequently accessed—without having to perform any data migration.

Low cost

S3 Glacier Retrieval is the lowest cost archive storage with milliseconds retrieval for rarely accessed data. It is ideal for data that is accessed once or twice per quarter, and that requires immediate access.

How it works — Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval storage class

S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval delivers the lowest-cost storage for long-lived data that is rarely accessed and requires milliseconds retrieval. The easiest way to store data in S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval is to use the S3 PUT API to upload data directly, or use S3 Lifecycle to transition data from the S3 Standard and S3 Standard-IA storage classes.

Use cases

Media asset workflows

Media and entertainment assets such as video and news footage require durable storage and can grow to many petabytes over time. Much of this data needs to be available immediately for breaking news events, video rendering, or content development. The Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval storage class allows you to archive older media content affordably while still making it available in milliseconds when it’s needed. To save even more on storage costs for media archives that don’t require milliseconds access, you can use S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval (Formerly S3 Glacier) or S3 Glacier Deep Archive.

Healthcare information archiving

Hospital systems need to retain petabytes of patient records (such as LIS, PACS, and EHR) for decades to meet regulatory requirements. The Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval storage class is ideal for medical images or genomics, where milliseconds retrieval is required.

Scientific data analytics

Research organizations generate, analyze, and archive vast amounts of data, such as for genomics or to train machine learning models. With the Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval storage class, you avoid the complexities of hardware and facility management and capacity planning, with the lowest-cost storage and milliseconds retrieval.