Configuring Vault Notifications in Amazon S3 Glacier - Amazon S3 Glacier
General Concepts

This page is only for existing customers of the S3 Glacier service using Vaults and the original REST API from 2012.

If you're looking for archival storage solutions we suggest using the S3 Glacier storage classes in Amazon S3, S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval, S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval, and S3 Glacier Deep Archive. To learn more about these storage options, see S3 Glacier storage classes and Long-term data storage using S3 Glacier storage classes in the Amazon S3 User Guide. These storage classes use the Amazon S3 API, are available in all regions, and can be managed within the Amazon S3 console. They offer features like Storage Cost Analysis, Storage Lens, advanced optional encryption features, and more.

Configuring Vault Notifications in Amazon S3 Glacier

Retrieving anything from Amazon S3 Glacier, such as an archive from a vault or a vault inventory, is a two-step process.

  1. Initiate a retrieval job.

  2. After the job is completed, download the job output.

You can set a notification configuration on a vault so that when a job is completed, a message is sent to an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic.

Topics

Configuring Vault Notifications in S3 Glacier: General Concepts

A S3 Glacier retrieval job request is run asynchronously. You must wait until S3 Glacier completes the job before you can get its output. You can periodically poll S3 Glacier to determine the job status, but that is not an optimal approach. S3 Glacier also supports notifications. When a job is completed, the job can post a message to an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic. Using this feature requires you to set a notification configuration on the vault. In the configuration, you identify one or more events and an Amazon SNS topic to which you want S3 Glacier to send a message when the event occurs.

S3 Glacier defines events specifically related to job completion (ArchiveRetrievalCompleted, InventoryRetrievalCompleted) that you can add to the vault's notification configuration. When a specific job is completed, S3 Glacier publishes a notification message to the SNS topic.

The notification configuration is a JSON document as shown in the following example. 

{    
   "SNSTopic": "arn:aws:sns:us-west-2:012345678901:mytopic",    
   "Events": ["ArchiveRetrievalCompleted", "InventoryRetrievalCompleted"] 
}

You can configure only one Amazon SNS topic for a vault.

Note

Adding a notification configuration to a vault causes S3 Glacier to send a notification each time the event specified in the notification configuration occurs. You can also optionally specify an Amazon SNS topic in each job initiation request. If you add both the notification configuration on the vault and also specify an Amazon SNS topic in your initiate job request, S3 Glacier sends both notifications.

The job completion message S3 Glacier sends include information such as the type of job (InventoryRetrieval, ArchiveRetrieval), job completion status, SNS topic name, job status code, and the vault ARN. The following is an example notification S3 Glacier sent to an SNS topic after an InventoryRetrieval job is completed. 

{
 "Action": "InventoryRetrieval",
 "ArchiveId": null,
 "ArchiveSizeInBytes": null,
 "Completed": true,
 "CompletionDate": "2012-06-12T22:20:40.790Z",
 "CreationDate": "2012-06-12T22:20:36.814Z",
 "InventorySizeInBytes":11693,
 "JobDescription": "my retrieval job",
 "JobId":"HkF9p6o7yjhFx-K3CGl6fuSm6VzW9T7esGQfco8nUXVYwS0jlb5gq1JZ55yHgt5vP54ZShjoQzQVVh7vEXAMPLEjobID",
 "SHA256TreeHash":null,
 "SNSTopic": "arn:aws:sns:us-west-2:012345678901:mytopic",
 "StatusCode":"Succeeded",
 "StatusMessage": "Succeeded",
 "VaultARN": "arn:aws:glacier:us-west-2:012345678901:vaults/examplevault"
}

If the Completed field is true, you must also check the StatusCode to check if the job completed successfully or failed.

Note

The Amazon SNS topic must allow the vault to publish a notification. By default, only the Amazon SNS topic owner can publish a message to the topic. However, if the Amazon SNS topic and the vault are owned by different AWS accounts, then you must configure the Amazon SNS topic to accept publications from the vault. You can configure the Amazon SNS topic policy in the Amazon SNS console.

For more information about Amazon SNS, see Getting Started with Amazon SNS.