AWS Glacier
AWS Glacier is a secure, durable, and low-cost cloud storage service for data archiving and long-term backup. It is designed for data that is infrequently accessed and requires long-term retention, such as regulatory archives, digital preservation, and backup storage. Data stored in Glacier is automatically encrypted and can be retrieved with retrieval times ranging from minutes to hours, depending on the retrieval option chosen.
Developers should use AWS Glacier when they need to store large amounts of data for compliance, archival, or backup purposes at a very low cost, as it offers significantly lower storage prices compared to standard AWS S3. It is ideal for use cases like storing logs, medical records, financial data, or media archives that must be retained for years but accessed rarely. However, it is not suitable for frequently accessed data due to retrieval costs and latency.