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Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) vs Amazon S3 Glacier comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.8
Amazon EBS offers 20-25% ROI by saving time and resources, enhancing scalability, and eliminating physical disk investments.
Sentiment score
7.0
Organizations achieved 300% ROI with Amazon S3 Glacier through infrastructure savings, improved efficiency, and resource reallocation, despite support challenges.
As a cloud storage option, it is flexible and cost-effective, eliminating the need for a permanent investment in hard disks.
If AWS improves support and cost management, there would be fewer reasons for users to consider other cloud platforms.
As it is Amazon S3 Glacier, it is used only for archival purposes, so it is comparatively okay to use it, and we can save money compared to the standard which is high.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
Amazon EBS support is generally well-received for responsiveness, despite occasional delays, high costs, and chat issues.
Sentiment score
5.5
Amazon S3 Glacier support is mixed: efficient assistance but variable response times, sufficient documentation, and varied support levels impact experiences.
Enterprise support provides access to AWS developers 24/7.
They provide instant and chat support, addressing concerns in a timely manner.
Once subscribed, the support team is very responsive, connecting remotely to assist with troubleshooting.
There is room for improvement in providing more skilled and comprehensive solutions.
They provide documentation and resolve issues.
If it is a business plan, then the support we have is really good.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.7
Amazon EBS delivers scalability and flexibility, requires manual scaling, supports diverse environments, but lacks auto-scaling for some users.
Sentiment score
9.2
Amazon S3 Glacier excels in scalability, supporting vast data volumes and seamless integration, meeting diverse enterprise demands globally.
Amazon EBS is easy to scale up or down as needed.
Vertical scaling can be achieved by adding additional volumes whenever the created storage is insufficient.
All cloud solutions permit scalability, and this is an important feature.
Amazon S3 Glacier auto-scales according to the data.
Amazon S3 Glacier is infinitely scalable, with no issues on our end.
Glacier has excellent scalability, with elasticity and security that meet industry standards.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Amazon EBS is praised for reliability, ease of use, stable performance, effective replication, and handling increased data loads.
Sentiment score
8.4
Amazon S3 Glacier is praised for reliable performance, excellent SLA, and is ideal for cold storage despite occasional regional issues.
AWS provides infrastructure stability like data centers, ensuring high stability.
I have never had problems with its stability.
If the server is stable, then EBS is stable.
It is specifically designed for cold storage.
I do not experience any stability issues.
Amazon S3 Glacier is quite stable, nine out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon EBS struggles with latency, cost, complex integration, scalability, encryption, multi-region accessibility, and lacks automation and improved support.
Amazon S3 Glacier needs improved speed, security, compliance, pricing clarity, user experience, support, cost efficiency, and interface usability.
Regarding EBS, if an instance is terminated, the volume is also deleted, which leads to data loss.
I would like EBS to have no limitations, similar to stream-like block storage, which can accommodate an unlimited amount of sales.
Deployment is not easy as it requires server downtime to map newly created volumes, impacting operations during additional volume additions.
I would like to see improvements in the transfer rate as it takes quite a long time to retrieve data from Glacier compared to standard S3 storage.
Support could be more robust, with a focus on providing comprehensive solutions even for novel issues.
Another improvement is making Glacier available in all regions.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon EBS pricing varies; seen as costly or efficient, it's affected by storage type and appreciated for transparency.
Amazon S3 Glacier provides cost-effective data archiving, though pricing complexity raises concerns despite lower initial costs and operational flexibility.
For SSD IOPS, you only pay $0.125 per gigabyte.
The pay-for-what-you-use model justifies the amount paid, with no extra or hidden charges.
Users are charged only for the data used, not for the allocated volume.
Compared to competitors like GCP, AWS can work on reducing hidden costs and overall pricing to retain startups and medium-sized businesses.
The storage cost is minimal, which is beneficial for archival purposes.
While it's generally cost-effective, the pricing model could be clearer.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon EBS provides scalable, high-performance storage with integration, encryption, and reliability for diverse workload needs.
Amazon S3 Glacier offers affordable, secure, and scalable long-term storage, ideal for infrequent data access and efficient cost management.
Amazon EBS is also scalable and provides high availability.
EBS provides vertical scaling options to add additional volumes when more storage is required.
Amazon EBS allows seamless changes to the instance type without affecting application availability.
Glacier greatly helps in managing storage costs by moving historical data to a lower-cost storage option.
The security features include object lock encryption and immutability options, so we can use this for backups.
The most valuable features of Amazon S3 Glacier are its cost-effectiveness for data archiving and its durability.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EBS (Elastic Block S...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Storage (5th)
Amazon S3 Glacier
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Public Cloud Storage Services (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Cloud Services solutions, they serve different purposes. Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) is designed for Cloud Storage and holds a mindshare of 2.6%, up 2.1% compared to last year.
Amazon S3 Glacier, on the other hand, focuses on Public Cloud Storage Services, holds 15.7% mindshare, down 16.2% since last year.
Cloud Storage
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Diverse features and affordability drive effective resource management
Amazon EBS offers diverse features. It can be used for multi-purpose storage, supporting single, multiple, or heavy loads. It has different types for various use cases, allowing me to choose based on my specific requirements. The primary advantage of Amazon EBS is affordability compared to other solutions like EFS or FSX. It acts as a hard drive for servers, making it essential for operation.
ArunDhwaj - PeerSpot reviewer
Versatile data storage improves security and supports increasing data volumes
Amazon S3 Glacier offers robust security features and practically infinite storage, where we can store all kinds of media swiftly. It supports various data types, including semi-structured and raw formats. These features facilitate log management and data dumping since the service is versatile enough to handle large volumes of data and provide necessary security.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Legal Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Amazon's S3 Glacier or EBS (Elastic Block Store)?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon's S3 Glacier or Elastic Block Store data storage software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Amazon's S3 Glacier, whi...
What do you like most about Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)?
The durability and snapshot capabilities are good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)?
The cost of Amazon EBS storage is high. I rate the price as eight out of ten. It is expensive to store a lot yet provides significant cost-efficiency as I pay only for the storage time required.
What do you like most about Amazon S3 Glacier?
I like creating buckets where data can be segregated at a high level and then routing the appropriate data to each designated bucket. In terms of value, I would say that the tool gets the job done ...
What needs improvement with Amazon S3 Glacier?
I am not sure about improvements; so far it has been good for me. The pricing is on the higher side. I have not mentioned any features as the product is good. Pricing is my concern; this is the onl...
What is your primary use case for Amazon S3 Glacier?
I am using AWS products such as EC2, Lambda, and Load Balancers. We are taking backups for the database and other things, and we are using it as a backup repository.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Amazon Glacier
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bazaar Voice, Crowd Strike, Adobe, Gamevil, Hess, CopperEgg, TotalJobs Group, SuperCell, Dropcam, Unilever
King Cpunty, Illumina, Backupify, Nearmap.com, Scribd, Baylor College of Medicine, SoundCloud
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) vs. Amazon S3 Glacier and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
865,140 professionals have used our research since 2012.