Just looked at Glacier in more depth there.
Im considering developing something around this myself: as its actually very cost effective.
$0.01 cent per GB per month
Data Transfer out
Up to 10 TB / month $0.120 / GB
But - in the small print.
Glacier is designed with the expectation that retrievals are infrequent and unusual, and data will be stored for extended periods of time. You can retrieve up to 5% of your average monthly storage (pro-rated daily) for free each month. If you choose to retrieve more than this amount of data in a month, you are charged a retrieval fee starting at $0.01 per gigabyte. Learn more. In addition, there is a pro-rated charge of $0.03 per gigabyte for items deleted prior to 90 days. Learn more
This means that if you store 1TB of data (1000 GB) you pay roughly $10 dollars per month just for storing it.
Then, you are granted 5% of that 1TB as free data transfer. (50GB Data Transfer free)
Meaning CEP 2.4 could be downloaded 25 times for free, and then each download (assuming a file size of 2.5 GB) would be 30 cents per download.
How much data is currently stored on the vault?
Just wondering so we could factor in some realistic numbers?
I'd imagine this would work out cheaper than $600
Further research reveals that Glacier retrieves data from its 'vault' at a slow speed, so it could take 3-5 hours.
I'm envisioning a system like this:
* Data gets uploaded through website -> goes to S3 ( Eg: CEP2.5)
* Every Download through website, retrieves from S3 (0.03 cents per GB storage, 0.12 cents per GB Transfer)
* Every night, old files are archived to Glacier, removing them from S3 (old being a file that hasnt been downloaded for a month or so)
* If someone wants to then download one of those old files, a retrieve job is initiated, the person downloading is notified that their download wont be ready for a few hours, and they will be notified by e-mail with a download link when it is.
* When the retrieve job is done, the files are moved into S3, where they are then downloadable again.
* The file then stays in S3 until it once again goes a few months without download activity.
Wash rinse repeat.