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Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) vs Amazon S3 Glacier comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.8
Amazon EBS offers 20-25% ROI by saving time and resources, enhancing scalability, and eliminating physical disk investments.
Sentiment score
4.0
Organizations benefit from Amazon S3 Glacier with cost savings and high ROI, despite needing better support and cost management.
As a cloud storage option, it is flexible and cost-effective, eliminating the need for a permanent investment in hard disks.
NoSQL Data Engineer at Extractta
If AWS improves support and cost management, there would be fewer reasons for users to consider other cloud platforms.
Technical Owner at Harman International
As it is Amazon S3 Glacier, it is used only for archival purposes, so it is comparatively okay to use it, and we can save money compared to the standard which is high.
Server Administrator at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
Amazon EBS support is generally well-received for responsiveness, despite occasional delays, high costs, and chat issues.
Sentiment score
5.4
Amazon S3 Glacier support receives mixed reviews, with some praising assistance and others noting delays and occasional unresponsiveness.
Enterprise support provides access to AWS developers 24/7.
AWS solution architect at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
They provide instant and chat support, addressing concerns in a timely manner.
Scrum Master/ Agile Coach at Porch Group
Once subscribed, the support team is very responsive, connecting remotely to assist with troubleshooting.
Lead Cloud Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Amazon S3 Glacier is a good solution for us, and I am very happy with it.
Project Engineer at Astellas Pharma US
There is room for improvement in providing more skilled and comprehensive solutions.
Technical Owner at Harman International
They provide documentation and resolve issues.
Sr Data Architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.7
Amazon EBS delivers scalability and flexibility, requires manual scaling, supports diverse environments, but lacks auto-scaling for some users.
Sentiment score
5.1
Amazon S3 Glacier excels in scalability and integration, handling large data volumes effortlessly with high user ratings and reliability.
Amazon EBS is easy to scale up or down as needed.
AWS Consultant at Virtual University
Vertical scaling can be achieved by adding additional volumes whenever the created storage is insufficient.
Scrum Master/ Agile Coach at Porch Group
All cloud solutions permit scalability, and this is an important feature.
Arquitecto De Soluciones De TI at Claro Colombia S.A
Amazon S3 Glacier auto-scales according to the data.
Sr DevOps Engineer at HTC Global
Amazon S3 Glacier is infinitely scalable, with no issues on our end.
Technical Owner at Harman International
Glacier has excellent scalability, with elasticity and security that meet industry standards.
Sr Data Architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Amazon EBS is praised for reliability, ease of use, stable performance, effective replication, and handling increased data loads.
Sentiment score
6.7
Amazon S3 Glacier is highly stable, with minimal outages and enhanced performance from AWS tools, ensuring reliable data access.
AWS provides infrastructure stability like data centers, ensuring high stability.
AWS solution architect at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
I have never had problems with its stability.
NoSQL Data Engineer at Extractta
If the server is stable, then EBS is stable.
Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group
It is specifically designed for cold storage.
Technical Owner at Harman International
I do not experience any stability issues.
Server Administrator at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Amazon S3 Glacier is quite stable, nine out of ten.
Sr DevOps Engineer at HTC Global
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon EBS struggles with latency, cost, complex integration, scalability, encryption, multi-region accessibility, and lacks automation and improved support.
Amazon S3 Glacier needs improvements in retrieval speed, integration, pricing, support, security, compliance, billing, and storage efficiency.
Regarding EBS, if an instance is terminated, the volume is also deleted, which leads to data loss.
DevOps Engineer at SONIX
I would like EBS to have no limitations, similar to stream-like block storage, which can accommodate an unlimited amount of sales.
AWS solution architect at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Deployment is not easy as it requires server downtime to map newly created volumes, impacting operations during additional volume additions.
Scrum Master/ Agile Coach at Porch Group
I would like to see improvements in the transfer rate as it takes quite a long time to retrieve data from Glacier compared to standard S3 storage.
Sr DevOps Engineer at HTC Global
Support could be more robust, with a focus on providing comprehensive solutions even for novel issues.
Technical Owner at Harman International
Another improvement is making Glacier available in all regions.
Sr Data Architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

Amazon EBS pricing varies; seen as costly or efficient, it's affected by storage type and appreciated for transparency.
Amazon S3 Glacier's pricing is affordable but confusing, with no licensing fees and potential long-term costs for large data volumes.
For SSD IOPS, you only pay $0.125 per gigabyte.
AWS solution architect at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
The pay-for-what-you-use model justifies the amount paid, with no extra or hidden charges.
Cloud AWS Fellow at Bytewise Limited
Users are charged only for the data used, not for the allocated volume.
Lead Cloud Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Compared to competitors like GCP, AWS can work on reducing hidden costs and overall pricing to retain startups and medium-sized businesses.
Technical Owner at Harman International
The storage cost is minimal, which is beneficial for archival purposes.
Sr Data Architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Amazon S3 Glacier is beneficial due to its lower cost.
Sr. Data Engineer at a real estate/law firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Amazon EBS provides scalable, high-performance storage with integration, encryption, and reliability for diverse workload needs.
Amazon S3 Glacier provides affordable, secure archiving with easy integration, strong encryption, user-friendly features, and reliable data management.
Amazon EBS is also scalable and provides high availability.
AWS solution architect at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
EBS provides vertical scaling options to add additional volumes when more storage is required.
Scrum Master/ Agile Coach at Porch Group
Amazon EBS allows seamless changes to the instance type without affecting application availability.
Lead Cloud Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Glacier greatly helps in managing storage costs by moving historical data to a lower-cost storage option.
Sr Data Architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
The security features include object lock encryption and immutability options, so we can use this for backups.
Server Administrator at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
The most valuable features of Amazon S3 Glacier are its cost-effectiveness for data archiving and its durability.
Sr DevOps Engineer at HTC Global
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EBS (Elastic Block S...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Storage (5th)
Amazon S3 Glacier
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Public Cloud Storage Services (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Cloud Services solutions, they serve different purposes. Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) is designed for Cloud Storage and holds a mindshare of 2.0%, down 2.2% compared to last year.
Amazon S3 Glacier, on the other hand, focuses on Public Cloud Storage Services, holds 9.9% mindshare, down 16.8% since last year.
Cloud Storage Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)2.0%
Dropbox Business - Enterprise6.9%
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP5.2%
Other85.9%
Cloud Storage
Public Cloud Storage Services Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon S3 Glacier9.9%
Amazon S315.3%
Microsoft Azure File Storage7.0%
Other67.8%
Public Cloud Storage Services
 

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group
Diverse features and affordability drive effective resource management
Amazon EBS offers diverse features. It can be used for multi-purpose storage, supporting single, multiple, or heavy loads. It has different types for various use cases, allowing me to choose based on my specific requirements. The primary advantage of Amazon EBS is affordability compared to other solutions like EFS or FSX. It acts as a hard drive for servers, making it essential for operation.
PF
Project Engineer at Astellas Pharma US
Archiving data has reduced storage costs and provides reliable long‑term retention
We have not really come across any downsides for us. It is possible that the retrieval of data may be expensive, which could be an issue, but we have not experienced that in fairness. Integration with our policies would be beneficial. We have policies for our systems where we delete data after a certain number of years, and having integration with Amazon S3 Glacier would be good. Having a guarantee that Amazon S3 Glacier would persist for the amount of time that we require in our archives would be valuable. In other words, Amazon would need to commit to support for the period we need. We could be talking about 20 years or longer. We cannot always move to the next version because we need to maintain old systems and legacy systems in order to maintain archives. A guarantee around support would be a good thing to have.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
University
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise17
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Amazon's S3 Glacier or EBS (Elastic Block Store)?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon's S3 Glacier or Elastic Block Store data storage software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Amazon's S3 Glacier, whi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)?
The cost of Amazon EBS storage is high. I rate the price as eight out of ten. It is expensive to store a lot yet provides significant cost-efficiency as I pay only for the storage time required.
What needs improvement with Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)?
EBS is solid — I won't pretend otherwise. But there are a few things that genuinely frustrate me as someone who works with it regularly. The **snapshot restore latency** is probably my biggest gri...
What needs improvement with Amazon S3 Glacier?
We have not really come across any downsides for us. It is possible that the retrieval of data may be expensive, which could be an issue, but we have not experienced that in fairness. Integration w...
What is your primary use case for Amazon S3 Glacier?
We were using Amazon S3 Glacier, and I have experience with this solution. We had an S3 bucket that we were using about a year ago. We just started using Amazon S3 Glacier, and overall, I have been...
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon S3 Glacier?
Amazon S3 Glacier offers an easy way to access a free solution. You can pick up their tools and get a minimum solution that you can play with in their environment, which is really nice because it m...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Amazon Glacier
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bazaar Voice, Crowd Strike, Adobe, Gamevil, Hess, CopperEgg, TotalJobs Group, SuperCell, Dropcam, Unilever
King Cpunty, Illumina, Backupify, Nearmap.com, Scribd, Baylor College of Medicine, SoundCloud
Find out what your peers are saying about Dropbox, Google, CTERA and others in Cloud Storage. Updated: May 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.