Limitations and Constraints

#	Limitation
1	The GIR storage class is supported only on AWS S3. GIR is not available on Azure, GCP, or Hammerspace S3 storage nodes. The `--storage-class` option and the GUI Archive Type field are not available on those node types. Generic S3 endpoints accept the Standard storage class and reject GIR.
2	Storage class is set when an OSV is created and cannot be changed later. Existing Standard OSVs cannot be converted to GIR, and existing GIR OSVs cannot be converted to Standard. To use a different storage class, create a new OSV using a new, empty bucket and migrate data by updating placement objectives.
3	Explicit placement is required to add a new GIR copy. Availability and durability objectives alone do not cause Hammerspace to place new data on GIR. Use a `place-on` or `confine-to` objective that targets `archive-object-volumes` or a specific GIR OSV. Existing GIR copies can remain, subject to snapshot, copy-on-write, and retention behavior.
4	All sites sharing a GIR SOSV must run a release that supports GIR. GIR is supported beginning with Hammerspace 5.3. Do not add or re-add a shared GIR SOSV from a 5.2 site: that site does not recognize the GIR storage class and can treat the volume as Standard. Between GIR-aware sites, every site must configure the shared OSV with the same storage class, and a mismatch causes the add to fail with a storage class mismatch error.
5	No impact or change to the Data Copy to Object feature. GIR does not interact with or modify the behavior of that feature.
6	No cost reporting or AWS billing integration. Hammerspace cannot show projected or historical GIR costs. Capacity reported by Hammerspace may not match AWS billing, because AWS applies a minimum billable object size and a minimum storage duration.
7	No GIR-specific usage or cost alerts. Hammerspace does not provide GIR-specific upload and download counters, cost projections, or billing-alert thresholds. Normal object-volume capacity thresholds remain available on GIR OSVs.
8	AWS billing minimums apply. AWS bills each GIR object for at least 128 KB and applies a 90-day minimum storage duration. Deleting, overwriting, or transitioning an object sooner can incur a prorated charge for the remaining duration. Hammerspace delays cleanup of GIR data to reduce early-deletion exposure, but cannot guarantee that these AWS charges are avoided.