AWS Storage Gateway vs Amazon Glacier: What are the differences?

Introduction

This article aims to provide a comparison between AWS Storage Gateway and Amazon Glacier, highlighting their key differences.

Data Storage and Retrieval: AWS Storage Gateway is a hybrid storage service that allows on-premises applications to store data in Amazon S3 or Amazon Glacier. It provides a virtual machine in the local environment that connects to cloud-based storage. On the other hand, Amazon Glacier is a low-cost storage service designed for long-term data archival. It offers very low storage costs but has longer retrieval times compared to AWS Storage Gateway.
Data Transfer Speed and Latency: AWS Storage Gateway provides faster data transfer speed as it operates in the same region as the Amazon S3 bucket or Amazon Glacier vault. It ensures low-latency access to data stored in the cloud. In contrast, Amazon Glacier has slower data transfer speeds and higher latency, which is acceptable for long-term archival purposes but may not be suitable for applications requiring frequent data access.
Pricing Model: AWS Storage Gateway pricing is based on the amount of data transferred, storage used, and specific features utilized. The cost includes data transfer, storage, and requests. On the other hand, Amazon Glacier pricing is based on data storage and retrieval. It offers low-cost storage options but incurs retrieval fees depending on the frequency, speed, and volume of data retrieval.
Data Lifecycle Management: AWS Storage Gateway provides flexibility in managing data lifecycle by allowing users to define storage tiers. This enables automatic shifting of data between different storage classes based on access patterns. Amazon Glacier is specifically designed for long-term data archival, where the data remains in cold storage for extended periods without frequent access.
Data Durability and Availability: AWS Storage Gateway ensures high data durability by leveraging the redundancy and reliability mechanisms of Amazon S3 or Amazon Glacier. It provides high availability with multiple availability zones within a region. On the other hand, Amazon Glacier offers durability of 99.999999999% but is designed for infrequently accessed data, resulting in lower availability compared to AWS Storage Gateway.
Integration with On-Premises Infrastructure: AWS Storage Gateway seamlessly integrates with existing on-premises infrastructure by providing virtual appliances. It facilitates smooth connectivity between on-premises applications and cloud storage. In contrast, Amazon Glacier does not offer direct integration with on-premises infrastructure. It primarily serves as a long-term archival storage solution, requiring data transfer from on-premises to the cloud.

In summary, AWS Storage Gateway is a hybrid storage service with faster data transfer, more flexible data lifecycle management, and better integration with on-premises infrastructure. Conversely, Amazon Glacier focuses on cost-effective long-term data archival with slower retrieval times, lower availability, and a lower level of integration with on-premises environments.

Detailed Comparison

Amazon Glacier	AWS Storage Gateway
In order to keep costs low, Amazon Glacier is optimized for data that is infrequently accessed and for which retrieval times of several hours are suitable. With Amazon Glacier, customers can reliably store large or small amounts of data for as little as $0.01 per gigabyte per month, a significant savings compared to on-premises solutions.	The AWS Storage Gateway is a service connecting an on-premises software appliance with cloud-based storage. Once the AWS Storage Gateway’s software appliance is installed on a local host, you can mount Storage Gateway volumes to your on-premises application servers as iSCSI devices, enabling a wide variety of systems and applications to make use of them. Data written to these volumes is maintained on your on-premises storage hardware while being asynchronously backed up to AWS, where it is stored in Amazon Glacier or in Amazon S3 in the form of Amazon EBS snapshots. Snapshots are encrypted to make sure that customers do not have to worry about encrypting sensitive data themselves. When customers need to retrieve data, they can restore snapshots locally, or create Amazon EBS volumes from snapshots for use with applications running in Amazon EC2. It provides low-latency performance by maintaining frequently accessed data on-premises while securely storing all of your data encrypted.
Low cost – Amazon Glacier is an extremely low-cost, pay-as-you-go storage service that can cost as little as $0.01 per gigabyte per month.;You store data in Amazon Glacier as archives. An archive can represent a single file or you may choose to combine several files to be uploaded as a single archive. Retrieving archives from Amazon Glacier requires the initiation of a job. Jobs typically complete in 3 to 5 hours. You organize your archives in vaults.;Secure – Amazon Glacier supports secure transfer of your data over Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and automatically stores data encrypted at rest using Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 256, a secure symmetric-key encryption standard using 256-bit encryption keys.;Durable – Amazon Glacier is designed to provide average annual durability of 99.999999999% for an archive. The service redundantly stores data in multiple facilities and on multiple devices within each facility.;Simple – Amazon Glacier allows you to offload the administrative burdens of operating and scaling archival storage to AWS, and makes retaining data for long periods, whether measured in years or decades, especially simple.	Gateway-Cached Volumes – Gateway-Cached volumes allow you to utilize Amazon S3 for your primary data, while retaining some portion of it locally in a cache for frequently accessed data.;Gateway-Stored Volumes – Gateway-Stored volumes store your primary data locally, while asynchronously backing up that data to AWS.;Data Snapshots – Gateway-Cached volumes and Gateway-Stored volumes provide the ability to create and store point-in-time snapshots of your storage volumes in Amazon S3.;Gateway-VTL – Gateway-VTL provides you with a cost-effective, scalable, and durable virtual tape infrastructure that allows you to eliminate the challenges associated with owning and operating an on-premises physical tape infrastructure.;Secure – The AWS Storage Gateway securely transfers your data to AWS over SSL and stores data encrypted at rest in Amazon S3 and Amazon Glacier using Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 256, a secure symmetric-key encryption standard using 256-bit encryption keys.;Durably backed by Amazon S3 and Amazon Glacier –The AWS Storage Gateway durably stores your on-premises application data by uploading it to Amazon S3 and Amazon Glacier. Amazon S3 and Amazon Glacier redundantly store data in multiple facilities and on multiple devices within each facility. Amazon S3 and Amazon Glacier also perform regular, systematic data integrity checks and are built to be automatically self-healing.;Compatible – There is no need to re-architect your on-premises applications. Gateway-Cached volumes and Gateway-Stored volumes expose a standard iSCSI block disk device interface and Gateway-VTL presents a standard iSCSI virtual tape library interface.
Statistics
Stacks 126	Stacks 18
Followers 97	Followers 59
Votes 10	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 6 Cold Storage 3 Easy Setup 1 Cheap	No community feedback yet