Back Up to Amazon Glacier
Arq now backs up to Amazon’s new Glacier service, and I’m really excited about it! Glacier storage is super-cheap — just $.01/GB per month!
With Glacier you can store 100GB for just $1/month! Or store a terabyte for just $10/month!
I got hundreds of emails and tweets asking for Glacier support. Turns out it’s a good option for some scenarios (even with the slow restore time and possible extra Amazon charges). People want to use it for big stuff like iPhoto libraries, videos, etc that get too expensive in S3. They use it as a secondary backup, so they don’t expect to actually restore unless their whole house burns down, taking their primary backup with it.
Arq’s been getting pretty popular with independent folks as well as corporate employees. One user described it recently as “the backup utility of choice for the geekier segment of the Mac community.” Glacier support makes Arq a good fit for even more people!
Retrieval Costs
Amazon has designed Glacier for “infrequent retrievals”, according to their FAQ. In the event you need to restore a significant amount of data from Glacier, Amazon may charge you an additional retrieval fee on top of the standard data-transfer-out charges. The formula for calculating this retrieval fee is complicated, but Arq helps figure it out for you. When you select an item to restore, Arq shows you the expected retrieval fee given the detected download rate:
You can adjust the download rate to change the retrieval fee:
For more details on Arq and Glacier, see the Arq product page.
Pricing
Arq 3 is still just $29 per computer. Upgrade from Arq 2 for just $15.
How to Upgrade from Arq 2 to Arq 3
To upgrade from Arq 2 to Arq 3, just pick “Check for Updates” from the Arq menu.
When Arq 3 launches, it’ll prompt you to upgrade your license.
Tags: backup aws glacier
This is great news, I’ve been holding off on trying Glacier until Arq supported it. The saving I’ll make on AWS fees in the first month alone is worth the upgrade fee
Comment by Glenn — November 6, 2012 @ 11:50 am
For $50 fixed cost you can buy a 1TB HD and the retrieval costs are zero. Combine with free Time Machine software and the only thing you are missing is the “offsite” storage in case of disaster. That is not an insurmountable problem…
Comment by jam cracker — November 6, 2012 @ 2:08 pm
Awesome! I recently bought Arq to backup videos of my children which is currently 100GB and growing. I already have time machine for basic backup; Arq is my plan for when the house burns down.
If the house burns down, I don’t mind if it takes three months to restore. Longer is okay if three months costs too much. I’d love a calculator to understand the pricing better. This could easily save me $100/year.
Comment by Colin Jensen — November 6, 2012 @ 3:04 pm
You “forgot” to mention in the update screen, that this is a paid upgrade. I don’t mind paying for (an upgrade for) great software, but I don’t like surprises like this.
Or do you want me to research every time i get an update, if this is a paid update?
So next time. Ask me for money first, then update. This way it doesn’t feel like you are tricking me into paying.
Comment by Robbie — November 6, 2012 @ 3:07 pm
NOTE: There seems to be no way to control whether or not the backups are to s3 or to glacier with the current UI. or maybe I’m just misinterpreting the UI?
Comment by Carter Schonwald — November 6, 2012 @ 3:11 pm
@Carter When you add a folder to Arq, it asks you whether you want it backed up to S3 or Glacier. There’s no facility for moving a folder’s backups from one to the other unfortunately.
Comment by Stefan Reitshamer — November 6, 2012 @ 3:25 pm
@Robbie I’m very sorry. It was unintentional. I forgot to add a warning in the release notes. I’ve added one.
If you don’t want to upgrade to Arq 3, please feel free to download and continue using Arq 2: http://www.haystacksoftware.com/arq/Arq_2.9.2.zip
Comment by Stefan Reitshamer — November 6, 2012 @ 3:28 pm
I have Arq 3 and have 40G already uploaded to S3.
I just created a Glacier vault. How can I convert over?
Comment by Seth — November 6, 2012 @ 3:34 pm
You can’t move data from S3 to Glacier. Amazon provides no API for that.
You’ll have to remove the folder from Arq and then re-add it; Arq will ask if you want S3 or Glacier when you add it.
Comment by Stefan Reitshamer — November 6, 2012 @ 3:37 pm
If I upgrade and want to pay with paypal I get the full price quoted. Any way to pay for the upgrade via PayPal without paying the full price?
Comment by Jilles — November 6, 2012 @ 3:49 pm
Hi,
I understand that there is no way to move data from S3 to Glacier using AWS APIs or Arq features.
Do you think about writing a tool for doing this? Like a batch job that we can put to run on EC2 for a few days that download from S3 and upload to Glacier and generate a new config file for Arq?
Cheers
Daniel
Comment by dclobato — November 6, 2012 @ 5:49 pm
Just a warning, Arq will not ask anything about Glacier if the AWS region of the backup set don’t have it.
I was using the South America region and going crazy removing and re-adding folders…
Comment by Philipe Farias — November 6, 2012 @ 6:26 pm
A few things:
1) My current S3 Arg bucket is in Oregon. In the Arq app, it says “(Glacier not supported in this region)”. What gives? Amazon supports Glacier in Oregon.
2) If you do a Glacier restore, is there a message that says something to the effect: “Waiting several hours for Amazon to get around to your restore job.”?
3) Apparently Amazon will add an S3-to-Glacier API: “In the coming months, Amazon S3 will introduce an option that will allow customers to seamlessly move data between Amazon S3 and Amazon Glacier based on data lifecycle policies.” Hopefully, that could get incorporated into Arq.
Comment by Toby — November 6, 2012 @ 8:10 pm
Nice, but Crashplan and Backblaze is still cheaper for large amounts of storage, without charging a retrieval fee!
Comment by Martin — November 6, 2012 @ 9:02 pm
How do I add a folder to both S3 and Glacier, also every time I try to add a folder to a new backup I get an error. “Folder /xxx/yyy is already being backed up and contains /xxx/yyy/Movies.” How can I correct this issue. Thanks
Comment by Nick — November 6, 2012 @ 9:57 pm
I bought a 5 pack for version 2 and want to upgrade.
I already have 1 computer running v2, but i want to set up a new computer with a licence for arq 2 and then upgrade them all to 3 – how do i do that?
Comment by Luke Holder — November 6, 2012 @ 11:13 pm
I think Glacier support should have been added for Arq 2 users. Don’t feel like paying 50% of the license just for Glacier support.
Comment by Jash Sayani — November 7, 2012 @ 4:38 am
Stefan,
Since there’s no way to migrate data from S3 to Glacier, could I wait until a folder finishes uploading to Glacier before deleting the same folder previously backed up to S3? — i.e. can I have a given folder upload to both? In this way, it wouldn’t really matter if it takes months to get it all to Glacier, as long as my existing backup to S3 is still around.
– Matt
Comment by Matt Henderson — November 7, 2012 @ 5:00 am
@Arq – Will I manually need to remove stuff from my S3 account through “Arq”. And then star using “Glasier”?
Comment by William — November 7, 2012 @ 5:38 am
“the backup utility of choice for the geekier segment of the Mac community” – just the opposite.
Comment by AK — November 7, 2012 @ 8:11 am
Hi Stefan,
Is there a way to have Arq on computer A see vaults/data in Glacier that was uploaded by Arq on computer B? (or any other content in my Glacier account, for that matter)
Thanks!
Comment by Julian — November 7, 2012 @ 1:59 pm
As new user, the setup seems to force you into using S3. I am only interested in using Glacier and it would be a nice to have that option during setup.
Comment by Matthew — November 7, 2012 @ 3:08 pm
@Stefan Thank you for responding to my post, and fixing the “problem” so quickly. And (of course) i upgraded already.
Comment by Robbie — November 7, 2012 @ 3:30 pm
Since it’s very difficult to respond to these comments through this blog (WordPress has limited functionality), please email your questions to support@haystacksoftware.com and I’ll respond. Thanks.
Comment by Stefan Reitshamer — November 7, 2012 @ 5:04 pm
I think the folks mentioning the cost of buying a hard drive, or using Backblaze, don’t fully understand who Glacier is for (obviously not them). The person who buys a hard drive and puts it on a shelf at their office and thinks they have offsite backup is probably not using a filesystem with serious checksum stuff going on and probably never does any test restores or maintenance, and also has little idea that the hard drive will fail silently on the shelf in a few years (plus one copy of something is not backup, it’s a copy). Backblaze costs less to retrieve because it’s not an archival service, it’s a “second copy” type backup solution. Glacier archives are for stashing stuff in and leaving it there in case of disaster/emergency. You can have a LOT more stuff in Glacier than you have online at home, spinning all the time. With Backblaze, just like all mirroring services, if you don’t keep something on your drive at home, and you delete it, it obediently vanishes from Backblaze shortly thereafter.
THIS APPLE COSTS MORE THAN THIS ORANGE, YOU ARE ALL FOOLS! *sigh*
Comment by trackofalljades — November 10, 2012 @ 2:18 am
This software if fantastic!
If you want to go MAC to OFF PREMISE (Glacier) there is no easier, smarter, efficient way for the masses. I’ve used over a dozen backup apps/hardware over the last two decades for both windows/mac such as: Retrospect, Norton, Time Machine, DropBox, network drives, externals, and too many other software solutions to mention. All of those have their pluses/minuses – None of those can provide as easy and sure defense against a true comprehensive (covering every digital asset you own) doomsday scenario – FIRE, FLOOD, HURRICANE, THEFT – you get the picture.
After signing up for AWS and downloading ARQ, it took only two clicks (2 minutes all total) to be up and running with a worry free plan for full protection. I set it to back up overnight and it was good to go in the AM. No manual needed, no learning curve, no hassle. I slept good for the first time regarding potential digital file loss since I’ve started using a computer in 1980.
The application is EXTREMELY EASY and STRAIGHT FORWARD, well designed. For those on this blog who are yakking about their own old-school models of combining hard drives, jump drives, minor league cloud services, doing it on your own, I’m sorry you simply do NOT understand the USE CASE this solves.
The biggest obstacle to proper backups is not technology its human nature, failure to fully comprehend where the risks are and to maintain over time a regimen for backup management. If you use Time Machine for local external and ARQ for Off Premise, you have all you need – a solution for life at $29 plus pennies on the GB from Amazon – a really cost effective solution that grows as you go.
Its a credit to the Haystack Software team for making this wonderful product – very nice job guys. ARQ RULES!
Comment by JimJ — December 9, 2012 @ 1:04 pm
What a great Upgrade. Now have my entire Aperture library backed up into Glacier for the first time! I’m hoping it dosen’t replace the whole file after every change, I presume the package “contents” will be seen as seperate files.
Saying goodbye to my Drobo FS and drives. Single HDD backup for me, if that dies then I have ARQ. I have recovered from a disastrous file delation before and it works an absolute charm. When I wasn’t sure, I contacted Stephan and he helped me out.
The only request I have is a scheduling option to the download/upload section. I have unlimited off-peak internet package, so setting the downloads/uploads to work, or limit bandwidth, at these times would be ideal and add another useful feature to an already amazing piece of software!
Keep up the good work and thanks!
Comment by Jonathan Kemp — January 17, 2013 @ 4:20 pm