S3 Standard to Glacier - Lifecycle Transition Cost

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votes

I wanted to confirm my understanding of the cost for lifecycle policy based transition of files from Standard to Glacier is correct as mentioned with below example.

Per 1000 files of transfer, we get charged a $0.06 (ap-south-1 region) to transfer to Glacier.

Eg:

  1. Bucket A: Has 1 million files (3TB total size). If we move all the objects to Glacier, we will be charged 1000000*0.06/1000 = $60
  2. Bucket B: Has 300 files (3TB total size). If we move all the objects to Glacier, we will be charged $0.06 or less (as it has less than 1000 files in the bucket)
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amazon-web-servicesamazon-s3cost-management
That doesn't make sense. 3TB is 3TB, and should be billed like so. Where that you get that from? – Stargazer
@Stargazer I tried it on calculator.aws mentioning the number of files in Lifecycle Transitions into S3 Glacier It is also mentioned in S3 pricing about the Lifecycle Transitions Charges – Hemanth S. Vaddi
You probably added the value to recover the data. It is a separated value, with its own tier. You will need to take that into account. – Stargazer
@Stargazer I was just asking about the one-time transition costs. I'm aware of the monthly storage costs. – Hemanth S. Vaddi

1 Answers

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votes

Yes, the transition costs are indeed driven by the number of files being moved. It is similar to performing a new PUT operation to S3. You pay based on the number of requests being made. Once the data (files) are part of that storage class, then you are charged for the storage based on the class.

As you may note, transition to Glaicer (or a PUT to Glacier) is around 10 times costlier than a corresponding PUT to S3 standard. In ap-south-1, S3 PUT is charged at $0.005 per 1000 requests, while Glacier transition (or Glacier PUT) is charged at $0.06 per 1000 requests (as of May 2020).

Also, there are additional costs that need to be considered while moving data from S3 to Glacier. Hence it is always a good idea to do a cost analysis of whether it makes sense to move data from S3 to Glacier and determine when, if at all, you would see any savings. I have covered such a cost analysis with various costs involved in great details in a blog post in case you are interested.

http://pragmaticnotes.com/2020/04/22/s3-to-glacier-lifecycle-transition-see-if-its-worth-it

Hope this helps!