Use Amazon S3 Batch Operations to Restore Archived Objects From Amazon S3 Glacier Storage Classes

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✅ AWS Level	Intermediate - 200
⏱ Time to complete	40 minutes
💰 Cost to complete	Free when using the AWS Free Tier or USD 1.01
🧩 Prerequisites	- AWS Account - CodeCatalyst Account - If you have more than one requirement, add it here using the `<br />` html tag
💻 Code Sample	Code sample used in tutorial on GitHub
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⏰ Last Updated	2023-11-09

Overview

Imagine it’s 4 p.m. on a Friday and your legal department just tasked you with providing access to files that have been stored in an S3 Flexible Retrieval archive storage class over the last several years. You're facing a tight deadline, and there are hundreds of files that need to be restored in order for the legal team to complete their work. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to quickly restore objects by configuring an S3 Batch Operations restore job, which streamlines the process of retrieving objects from archival storage classes ensuring swift access to vital data while adhering to cost-effective storage practices.

Amazon S3 Batch Operations is a managed solution for performing storage actions like copying and tagging objects at scale, whether for one-time tasks or for recurring, batch workloads. S3 Batch Operations can perform actions across billions of objects and petabytes of data with a single request.

To perform work in S3 Batch Operations, you create a job. The job consists of the list of objects, the action to perform, and the set of parameters you specify for that type of operation. You can create and run multiple jobs at a time in S3 Batch Operations or use job priorities as needed to define the precedence of each job and ensures the most critical work happens first.

S3 Batch Operations also manages retries, tracks progress, sends completion notifications, generates reports, and delivers events to AWS CloudTrail for all changes made and tasks executed. This getting started guide shows you how to use S3 Batch Operations to initiate restore requests for objects stored in Amazon S3 Glacier storage classes.

For more information on S3 Batch Operations, check out the Using Batch Operations section in the Amazon S3 User Guide, and for additional step-by-step guides on how to use S3 Batch Operations, you can read these tutorials focused on Using S3 Batch Operations to encrypt objects with S3 Bucket Keys and _Batch-transcoding videos with S3 Batch Operations, AWS Lambda, and AWS Elemental MediaConvert. By the end of this tutorial, you will be able to use S3 Batch Operations to initiate restore requests for S3 objects in Amazon S3 Glacier storage classes.

In this tutorial, you will:

Configure a S3 Batch Operations restore job to restore objects from the Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval storage class.
- Create an Amazon S3 bucket
- Archive objects into the S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval storage class
- Create an S3 Batch Operations manifest
- Create, confirm, and run an S3 Batch Operations job
- Monitor the progress of an S3 Batch Operations job
- View S3 Batch Operations completion report
- Clean up resources

Prerequisites

Before starting this tutorial, you will need:

An AWS account: If you don't already have an account, follow the Setting Up Your Environment getting started guide for a quick overview.

Implementation

Step 1: Create an Amazon S3 Bucket

Log in to the AWS Management Console using your account information. In the search bar, enter S3, then select S3 from the results.

In the left navigation pane on the S3 console, choose Buckets, and then choose Create bucket.

Enter a descriptive, globally unique name for your source bucket. Select the AWS Region you want your bucket created in. In this example, the EU (Frankfurt) eu-central-1 region is selected.

You can leave the remaining options as defaults. Navigate to the bottom of the page and choose Create bucket.
Archive objects into the Glacier Flexible Retrieval storage class

Step 2: Create Sample Files and Manifest File

On your workstation, create a text file that contains sample text and save it to your workstation. To create these files, you can leverage the command prompt and the sample command shown below. You can also use any of your existing files for the purpose of this tutorial.

echo “sample file 1” > testfile-1.txt

echo “sample file 2” > testfile-2.txt

echo “sample file 3” > testfile-3.txt

From the Amazon S3 console, search for the bucket that you created in Step 1, and select the bucket name.

Next, select the Objects tab. Then, from within the Objects section, choose Upload.

Then, in the Upload section, choose Add files. Navigate to your local file system to locate the test file that you created above. Select the appropriate file, and then choose Open. Your file will be listed in the Files and folders section.

Since this tutorial is focused on restoring objects from the S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval storage class, expand the Properties tab to select the Glacier Flexible Retrieval storage class, then select Upload.

After the file upload operations have completed, you will be presented with a status message indicating if the upload was successful or not. Upon successful upload of the files, choose Close.

You should now see the objects in the S3 Console and their respective storage class.

Create a S3 Batch Operations manifest

A manifest is an Amazon S3 object that contains object keys that you want Amazon S3 to act upon. If you supply a user-generated manifest it must be in the form of an Amazon S3 Inventory report or CSV file. When performing S3 Batch Replication, Amazon S3 generates a manifest based on your replication configuration. While Amazon S3 Inventory may be a suitable fit when performing batch operations at scale, it takes up to 48 hours for the first S3 inventory report to be delivered. For the purpose of this tutorial, we will be leveraging a CSV manifest.

Using Excel or your editor of choice, create a CSV with a list of “Bucket,Key“ pairs for each object you wish to restore.

In this example the manifest is:

S3 Batch Operations CSV manifests can include an optional version ID as a third column of the CSV. If using a versioned bucket, we recommend that you supply the version ID of each object in your manifest. Batch Operations will perform the operation on the latest version if no version ID is specified.

Save the file as “manifest.csv”.
Upload the S3 Batch Operations manifest to the S3 bucket. Leave the options on the default settings, and choose the Upload button.

Step 3: Create S3 Batch Operations Job

Create and run an S3 Batch Operations job. On the left navigation pane of the Amazon S3 console home page, choose Batch Operations, and then choose Create Job.

On the Create job page, select the AWS Region where you want to create your S3 Batch Operations job. You must create the job in the same AWS Region in which the source S3 bucket is located.

Specify the manifest type to be CSV and browse to the manifest file uploaded to the bucket in Step 3.

Choose Next to go to the Choose operation page.
Select the Restore operation. The Restore operation initiates restore requests for the archived Amazon S3 objects that are listed in your manifest.

Select the restore source as Glacier Flexible Retrieval or Glacier Deep Archive and the number of days that the restore copy is available as 1 day.

This means that once the restore is completed, Amazon S3 restores a temporary copy of the object only for the specified duration. After that, it deletes the restored object copy.
S3 Batch Operations supports STANDARD and BULK retrieval tiers. Select the Retrieval tier to be Standard retrieval. With S3 Batch Operations, restores in the Standard retrieval tier now typically begin to return objects to you within minutes, down from 3–5 hours, so you can easily speed up your data restores from archive. For more information about the differences between the retrieval tiers, see Archive retrieval options.

Configure additional options:

Enter a Description to best define the purpose of the job.
Select a Priority to indicate the relative priority of this job to others running in your account.

Note: A higher number indicates higher priority. For example, a job with a priority of 2 will be prioritized over a job with priority 1. S3 Batch Operations prioritizes jobs according to priority numbers, but strict ordering isn't guaranteed. Therefore, you shouldn't use job priorities to ensure that any one job starts or finishes before any other job. If you need to ensure strict ordering, wait until one job has finished before starting the next.

Generate a S3 Batch Operations completion report.

Next, you will have the option to request a completion report for your S3 Batch Operations job as shown in the screenshot below. As long as S3 Batch Operations successfully processes at least one object, Amazon S3 generates a completion report after the S3 Batch Operations job completes, fails, or is cancelled. You have the option to include all tasks or only failed tasks in the completion report. The completion report contains additional information for each task, including the object key name and version, status, error codes, and descriptions of any errors.

Completion reports provide an easy way to view the status of each object restored using the S3 Batch Operations job and identify failures, if any. In this example, we chose to Generate completion report for All tasks so that we can review the status of all objects within this job. Alternatively, you can also choose to view the status of objects that failed to restore only by choosing the Failed tasks only option. We have provided the destination bucket as the destination for the completion report. For additional examples of completion reports, see Examples: S3 Batch Operations completion reports.

Creating an Identity and Access Management (IAM) role for S3 Batch Operations:

Amazon S3 must have permissions to perform S3 Batch Operations on your behalf. You grant these permissions through an IAM role.
S3 Batch Operations provides a template of the IAM role policy and the IAM trust policy that should be attached to the IAM role.
To create an IAM policy in the AWS Console, see Creating policies using the JSON editor. On step 5, copy and paste the “IAM Role Policy” template shown in the S3 batch operations page. You must replace the Target Resource in the IAM policy with the bucket name. Once the IAM policy is successfully created, create an IAM role and attach the policy to the IAM role.
To create an IAM role in the AWS Management Console, see Creating a role for an AWS service. On step 4, choose the service as S3 in the search bar and select the S3 Batch Operation option. On step 5, Select the IAM policy created in the previous section and attach it to the IAM role. Upon successful creation of the IAM role, it should have a trust policy identical to the IAM trust policy template and a permissions policy identical to the IAM role policy template attached to it.
Coming back to the S3 Batch Operations page, use the refresh icon and select the newly created IAM role from the drop-down.

Optional – You can label and control access to your S3 Batch Operations jobs by adding tags. Tags can be used to identify who is responsible for a Batch Operations job. Add Job tags to your S3 Batch Operations job, and then choose Next to review your job configuration.

On the Review page, validate the configuration and, choose Edit to make changes if required, then choose Next to save your changes and return to the Review page. When your job is ready, choose Create job.

After the S3 Batch Operations job is created, you will be redirected to the Batch Operations home page as shown in the following screenshot. Here, you can review the job configuration by selecting the Job ID which will take you to the Job details page. When the job is successful, a banner displays at the top of the Batch Operations page.

Upon creation of the job, Batch Operations processes the manifest. If successful, it will change the job status to Awaiting your confirmation to run. You must confirm the details of the job and select Run job.

You should then see a notification of successful confirmation for the job displayed in the banner at the top of the Batch Operations page.

Step 4: Monitor the Progress of a S3 Batch Operations Job

Select the job which was just created on the S3 Batch Operations console page.
After an S3 Batch Operations job is created and run, it progresses through a series of statuses. You can track the progress of an S3 Batch Operations job by referring to these statuses on the Batch Operations home page.
For example, a job is in the New state when it is created, moves to the Preparing state when Amazon S3 is processing the manifest and other job parameters, then moves to the Ready state when it is ready to run, Active when it is in progress, and finally Completed when the processing completes. For a full list of job statuses, see _S3 _Batch Operations job statuses.

Here, you can view information about the job’s progress such as Job Status, Total succeeded, and Total failed. Once the job has completed executing, it will generate a report and transition to the Completed state.

Verify that the restore is successful.
Once the job is successfully completed, go to the Amazon S3_ console__ home page_, select the bucket, and choose an object in the Glacier Flexible Retrieval storage class.
The banner shows that the Restoration status of the object is In-progress. The download option is greyed out as the object is not yet accessible to download.

Standard retrievals initiated by using S3 Batch Operations restore operation typically start within minutes and finish within 3-5 hours for objects stored in the S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval storage class.
After the time elapses, verify the restore status and you can see that the object has been restored. You should also be able to download the object until the Restoration Expiry date.

View S3 Batch Operations completion reports. S3 Batch Operations generates a report for jobs that have completed, failed, or cancelled. Select the path you’ve configured to save the completion reports.

Download the completion report to analyze the status of each task.
In the following example, all the objects have been successfully restored.
The description of errors for each failed task can be used to diagnose issues that occur during job creation, such as permissions.

Clean Up Resources

There is a small cost for the objects stored in S3 and to avoid any unecessary charges please proceed with the following steps:

Empty the bucket.
If you have logged out of your AWS Management Console session, log back in. Navigate to the S3 console and select the Buckets menu option. First, you will need to delete the test object from your test bucket. Select the name of the bucket you have been working with for this tutorial.
Select the radio button to the left of the source bucket you created for this tutorial, and choose the Empty button.
Select Empty. Review the warning message. If you desire to continue emptying this bucket, enter the bucket name into the Empty bucket confirmation box, and choose Empty bucket.

Note: Objects that are archived to the S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval storage class are charged for a minimum storage duration of 90 days. Objects deleted prior to the minimum storage duration incur a pro-rated charge equal to the storage charge for the remaining days. Objects that are deleted, overwritten, or transitioned to a different storage class before the minimum storage duration will incur the normal storage usage charge plus a pro-rated storage charge for the remainder of the minimum storage duration. For more information, refer to the S3 Pricing page.

Delete the bucket.
Return to the Amazon S3 home page.
Select the radio button to the left of the bucket you created for this tutorial, and choose the Delete button.
Review the warning message. If you desire to continue deletion of this bucket, enter the bucket name into the Delete bucket confirmation box, and choose Delete bucket **** button.a. Delete the IAM role and the IAM policy.
If you have logged out of your AWS Management Console session, log back in. Navigate to the IAM console and select Roles from the left menu options.
Delete the role created for this tutorial.
Navigate to Policies from the left menu options.
Delete the IAM policy that was created for this tutorial.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have successfully recovered the files necessary for the legal team to defend your company. You have learned how to use S3 Batch Operations to restore archived objects. You can customize the restore tier and expiration time depending on your access needs. You can also use S3 Batch Operations to perform other types of requests such as replication, Lambda invocation, replacing object ACLs, tagging and enabling object lock.

To learn more about S3 Batch Operations, visit the following resources.

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