When backup files are initially created they're stored in S3 Standard storage. This tier is optimized for storing data that's infrequently accessed; but that also allows you to access it immediately. After 30 days the backups transition to the S3 Standard-Infrequent Access storage class to save on costs.

If your source clusters are running ONTAP 9.10.1 or greater, you can choose to tier backups to either S3 Glacier or S3 Glacier Deep Archive storage after a certain number of days (typically more than 30 days) for further cost optimization. You can set this to "0" or to 1-999 days. If you set it to "0" days, you cannot change it later to 1-999 days.

Data in these tiers can't be accessed immediately when needed, and will require a higher retrieval cost, so you need to consider how often you may need to restore data from these archived backup files. See the section on this page about restoring data from archival storage.

Note that when you configure BlueXP backup and recovery with this type of lifecycle rule, you must not configure any lifecycle rules when setting up the bucket in your AWS account.

Learn about S3 storage classes.

While storing older backup files in archival storage is much less expensive than Standard or Standard-IA storage, accessing data from a backup file in archive storage for restore operations will take a longer amount of time and will cost more money.