S3 Archive Restore Automation

Part of the MediaBridge series. The Problem S3 Glacier and Glacier Deep Archive are cheap cold storage tiers. Files in Glacier take 3-5 hours to restore. Files in Deep Archive take up to 12 hours. When a user tries to access an archived file, S3 returns a 403 (or the object is simply missing from the listing depending on how the bucket is configured). The user gets no feedback about what happened or when the file will be available. ...

March 15, 2026 · 5 min · 929 words · Sagar Nayak