If you're new to archival storage in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), we recommend that you start by
learning more about the S3 Glacier storage classes in Amazon S3, S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval, S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval, and S3 Glacier Deep Archive. For more information, see S3 Glacier storage classes
Accessing Amazon S3 Glacier
Amazon S3 Glacier is a RESTful web service that uses HTTP and HTTPS as a transport protocol and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) as a message-serialization format. Your application code can make requests directly to the S3 Glacier web service API. When using the REST API directly, you must write the necessary code to sign and authenticate your requests. For more information about the API, see API Reference for Amazon S3 Glacier.
Alternatively, you can simplify application development by using the AWS SDKs that wrap the S3 Glacier REST API calls. You provide your credentials, and these libraries take care of authentication and request signing. For more information about using the AWS SDKs, see Using the AWS SDKs with Amazon S3 Glacier.
S3 Glacier also provides a console. However, all archive and job operations require you
to write code and make requests by using either the REST API directly or the AWS SDK
wrapper libraries. To access the S3 Glacier console, go to S3 Glacier Console
Regions and Endpoints
You create a vault in a specific AWS Region. You always send your S3 Glacier requests to an endpoint specific to an AWS Region. For a list of the AWS Regions supported by S3 Glacier, see Amazon S3 Glacier endpoints and quotas in the AWS General Reference.
