AWS: Glacier Restores Can Get Pricey
I have been working with AWS to automate disaster recovery. Sync data up to S3 buckets (or, sometimes, EBS) and then write Ansible scripts to deploy a bunch of EC2 instances, restore the data, configure the systems.
Restoring data from Glacier is kind of a pain to automate. You have to iterate over the items in a bucket and issue restore requests for each item. But it gets more exciting than that on the billing end: Glacier restores can be crazy expensive!
A few things I learned this week:
1) Amazon Glacier restore fees are based on how quickly you want to restore your data. You can restore up to 5% of your total S3 storage on a given day for free. If you restore more than that they start to charge you and at the end of the month you’re confused by the $,$$$ bill.
2) Amazon Glacier will also charge you money if you delete data that hasn’t been in there for at least three months. If you Glacier something, you will pay to store it for at least three months. So, Glacier your archive data, but for something like a rolling backup, no Glacier.
3) When you get a $,$$$ bill one month because you were naive, file a support request and they can get you some money refunded.
