Archiving Millions of Small Files to Glacier: When the 'Cheap Storage' Trick Backfires

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0700

S3 Glacier Deep Archive is famous for dirt-cheap long-term storage. Point a Lifecycle Rule at millions of tiny log files, though, and “cheap” can flip into “more expensive than doing nothing at all.”

Hi everyone 👋

I once confidently set up an S3 Lifecycle Rule: “any object older than 30 days automatically transitions to Glacier Deep Archive.” Simple, standard cost-optimization advice. The catch: the bucket in question held millions of small log files, each only a few KB.

Glacier on The David Page

Archiving Millions of Small Files to Glacier: When the 'Cheap Storage' Trick Backfires