Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

This page is only for existing customers of the Amazon Glacier service using Vaults and the original REST API from 2012.

If you're looking for archival storage solutions, we recommend using the Amazon Glacier storage classes in Amazon S3, S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval, S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval, and S3 Glacier Deep Archive. To learn more about these storage options, see Amazon Glacier storage classes.

Amazon Glacier (original standalone vault-based service) will no longer accept new customers starting December 15, 2025, with no impact to existing customers. Amazon Glacier is a standalone service with its own APIs that stores data in vaults and is distinct from Amazon S3 and the Amazon S3 Glacier storage classes. Your existing data will remain secure and accessible in Amazon Glacier indefinitely. No migration is required. For low-cost, long-term archival storage, Amazon recommends the Amazon S3 Glacier storage classes, which deliver a superior customer experience with S3 bucket-based APIs, full Amazon Web Services Region availability, lower costs, and Amazon service integration. If you want enhanced capabilities, consider migrating to Amazon S3 Glacier storage classes by using our Amazon Solutions Guidance for transferring data from Amazon Glacier vaults to Amazon S3 Glacier storage classes.

Configuring Vault Notifications in Amazon Glacier

Retrieving anything from Amazon Glacier, such as an archive from a vault or a vault inventory, is a two-step process.

You can set a notification configuration on a vault so that when a job is completed, a message is sent to an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic.

Configuring Vault Notifications in Amazon Glacier: General Concepts

A Amazon Glacier retrieval job request is run asynchronously. You must wait until Amazon Glacier completes the job before you can get its output. You can periodically poll Amazon Glacier to determine the job status, but that is not an optimal approach. Amazon Glacier also supports notifications. When a job is completed, the job can post a message to an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic. Using this feature requires you to set a notification configuration on the vault. In the configuration, you identify one or more events and an Amazon SNS topic to which you want Amazon Glacier to send a message when the event occurs.

Amazon Glacier defines events specifically related to job completion (ArchiveRetrievalCompleted, InventoryRetrievalCompleted) that you can add to the vault's notification configuration. When a specific job is completed, Amazon Glacier publishes a notification message to the SNS topic.

The notification configuration is a JSON document as shown in the following example.

{    
   "SNSTopic": "arn:aws:sns:us-west-2:012345678901:mytopic",    
   "Events": ["ArchiveRetrievalCompleted", "InventoryRetrievalCompleted"] 
}

You can configure only one Amazon SNS topic for a vault.

The job completion message Amazon Glacier sends include information such as the type of job (InventoryRetrieval, ArchiveRetrieval), job completion status, SNS topic name, job status code, and the vault ARN. The following is an example notification Amazon Glacier sent to an SNS topic after an InventoryRetrieval job is completed.

{
 "Action": "InventoryRetrieval",
 "ArchiveId": null,
 "ArchiveSizeInBytes": null,
 "Completed": true,
 "CompletionDate": "2012-06-12T22:20:40.790Z",
 "CreationDate": "2012-06-12T22:20:36.814Z",
 "InventorySizeInBytes":11693,
 "JobDescription": "my retrieval job",
 "JobId":"HkF9p6o7yjhFx-K3CGl6fuSm6VzW9T7esGQfco8nUXVYwS0jlb5gq1JZ55yHgt5vP54ZShjoQzQVVh7vEXAMPLEjobID",
 "SHA256TreeHash":null,
 "SNSTopic": "arn:aws:sns:us-west-2:012345678901:mytopic",
 "StatusCode":"Succeeded",
 "StatusMessage": "Succeeded",
 "VaultARN": "arn:aws:glacier:us-west-2:012345678901:vaults/examplevault"
}    

If the Completed field is true, you must also check the StatusCode to check if the job completed successfully or failed.

For more information about Amazon SNS, see Getting Started with Amazon SNS.