Overview
Your storage options
IBM Cloud® Object Storage offers the following storage classes designed to meet the breadth of your data storage and access needs while effectively managing storage costs.
Smart Tier
Designed for any workload, but ideal for unknown and changing data patterns, Smart Tier offers a simplified pricing structure with automatic tier classification and cost optimization, ensuring you receive the optimal storage cost each month.
Standard, Vault or Cold Vault
Designed to be used when data activity is more predictable and consistent, these storage classes can be selected to meet your data access needs for active, less active and cold data.
Archive
Designed to easily manage the lifecycle of your data and to lower storage costs. Automatically tiers data to IBM Cloud Object Storage Archive or Accelerated Archive for long-term data retention.
Storage class capabilities
Vault (for less active data)
Vault (for less active data)
Use this level for less active data that's accessed once a month or less. Data is immediately available when needed. A low retrieval charge applies for reading data. Common use cases include backup and digital asset retention. Vault includes a threshold for object size and storage period with a minimum billable object size of 128 KB and a minimum storage duration of 30 days.
Cold Vault (for cold data)
Cold Vault (for cold data)
Use this option for data accessed only a few times a year. A larger retrieval charge applies for reading data. Common use cases include long-term backup, large data set preservation, or older media content. Cold Vault includes a threshold for object size and storage period with a minimum billable object size of 256 KB and a minimum storage duration of 90 days. Objects smaller than the minimum size will incur a charge for the minimum billable object size.
Smart Tier details
Smart Tier
Smart Tier is designed for the changing nature of data. It stores your ever-changing data without cost overruns and automatically bills at the optimal storage rate each month. Automatic cost optimization for your storage is applied using a built-in pricing tier classification based on your data activity.
First, Smart Tier analyzes your monthly activity. Then you're billed at the Hot, Cool or Cold rate based on the amount of storage and access. There are no retrieval charges, no minimum object size, no minimum duration requirement — and no other overhead charges¹.
Smart Tier: How it works
1. Create a Smart Tier storage bucket
Create a Smart Tier bucket in IBM Cloud Object Storage, then upload and manage your objects. Data activity will be tracked during the month.
2. Get automatic pricing tier classification
Have your data classified into one of the three built-in tiers: hot, cool and cold, at the end of each monthly cycle.
3. Get your monthly billing optimized
Get billed at either the hot, cool or cold rate across your data stored in Smart Tier.
Archive details
Archive your data
The IBM Cloud Object Storage Archive and Accelerated Archive options are low-cost options for rarely accessed data that requires long-term retention. Customers can manage the data lifecycle by applying an archive policy for objects written to their object storage buckets in any of the storage classes. After the specified duration, objects are automatically archived.
Objects transitioned from any storage class to Archive or that are restored from Archive do not incur a minimum storage duration charge associated with the storage class. Once archived, customers can restore a temporary copy of their objects when needed².
Archive benefits
Lowest cost
Archive is the lowest-cost option, ideal for long-term retention of large data sets such as regulatory and compliance records, large data set preservation and long-term storage of backups. Data storage is at USD 0.00099 per GB per month and restores at USD 0.02 per GB.
Data transition using archive policy
Archive works with all IBM Cloud Object Storage Classes — Smart Tier, Standard, Vault and Cold Vault. This allows you to apply age-based policies to move objects to the lower-cost archive to reduce storage costs.
Simplified API
You can use the IBM Cloud Object Storage API — with support for S3 API constructs — for transition lifecycle and restore. You can also write your own applications using IBM Cloud Object Storage SDKs.
Ready to get started?
Footnotes
¹Data is classified as Hot if Number of Operations ≥ 1000 x {Storage (GB) - Retrievals (GB)}
Data is classified as Cold if Number of Operations ≤ {Storage (GB) - Retrievals (GB)}
Data is classified as Cool if neither of the above conditions are true. To learn more, see billing topic.
²Archive (for "Cold" archiving data): A restore from Archive takes up to 12 hours. Archive has a minimum storage duration of 90 days.
Accelerated Archive (for "Warm" archiving data): A restore from Accelerated Archive takes up to 2 hours. Accelerated Archive has a minimum storage duration of 90 days.