Step 6: Delete a Vault in Amazon Glacier - Amazon Glacier
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.

Step 6: Delete a Vault in Amazon Glacier

A vault is a container for storing archives. To delete an Amazon Glacier vault, you must first delete all existing archives in the vault as of the last inventory that Amazon Glacier computed.

You can delete a vault programmatically or by using the Amazon Glacier console. For information about deleting a vault programmatically, see Deleting a Vault in Amazon Glacier.

Important

If you upload an archive to a vault or delete an archive from a vault within the recent 24 hours, you must wait until the last vault inventory is updated to reflect the latest information. Amazon Glacier prepares an inventory for each vault periodically, every 24 hours.

To delete an empty vault

  1. Sign in to the Amazon Web Services Management Console and open the Amazon Glacier console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/glacier/home.

  2. From the Select a Region menu, choose the Amazon Web Services Region for the vault that you want to delete.

    In this getting started exercise, your example vault is in the US West (Oregon) Region.

  3. Select the option button next to the empty vault that you want to delete. If the vault is not empty, you must delete all archives before deleting the vault. For more information, see Deleting an Archive in Amazon Glacier.

    Important

    Deleting a vault can't be undone.

  4. Choose Delete.

  5. The Delete vault dialog box appears. Choose Delete.

To delete a nonempty vault

  1. If you're deleting a nonempty vault, you must first delete all existing archives before deleting the vault. You can do this by writing code to make a delete archive request by using either the REST API, the Amazon SDK for Java, the Amazon SDK for .NET or the Amazon CLI. For information about deleting archives, see Step 5: Delete an Archive from a Vault in Amazon Glacier.

  2. After the vault is empty, follow the steps to delete an empty vault in the preceding procedure.