Cost Considerations
GIR’s pricing model differs significantly from S3 Standard, and these differences drive nearly all of Hammerspace’s GIR behavior. Understanding the cost model before deploying GIR is strongly recommended.
| The figures below are representative values intended to illustrate the relative cost differences between storage classes. Refer to the AWS S3 Pricing page for current pricing in your AWS region. |
| Cost dimension | S3 Standard | S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval |
|---|---|---|
Storage per GB / month |
$0.023 |
$0.004 (~5.75× cheaper) |
|
$0.005 |
$0.02 (4× more expensive) |
|
$0.0004 |
$0.02 |
Per-GB retrieval |
none |
$0.03 |
|
Reading from GIR incurs retrieval and request charges that Standard storage does not. How much more a given read costs depends on the region, the object sizes, and the number of requests, so no single ratio holds generally — work it out for your own access pattern using the AWS S3 Pricing page. Hammerspace deliberately constrains GIR reads to limit this exposure, but any read activity, including mobility jobs, drives measurable charges. |
Additional Billing Rules
Minimum object size: 128 KB. AWS bills a minimum of 128 KB per stored object regardless of actual file size. A 10-byte file stored on a GIR OSV is billed at the 128 KB rate. For workloads with large numbers of small files, this can make GIR more expensive than Standard, not less.
Minimum retention period: 90 days. Objects deleted before day 90 are still charged for the remainder of the 90-day window. Hammerspace applies a 90-day minimum time-to-live (TTL) at the Cloud Mover layer to align its own garbage collection behavior with this billing rule. Deleting a file from a Hammerspace share does not trigger an immediate charge, but AWS continues to bill for storage for up to 90 days.
Object overwrite before 90 days. If a file stored on a GIR OSV is overwritten before its 90-day window has elapsed, the previous version is billed for the remainder of its window and the new version starts a fresh 90-day period.
Cross-region retrieval. Cross-region GET requests incur an additional ~$0.02/GB transfer charge on top of the standard GIR retrieval fee.