An iceberg, broken off from the glacier after Tuesday's earthquake, is seen in the Tasman Lake, 200km (124 miles) southeast of Christchurch in this handout photograph released February 23, 2011.
An iceberg, broken off from the glacier after Tuesday's earthquake, is seen in the Tasman Lake, 200km (124 miles) southeast of Christchurch in this handout photograph released February 23, 2011. Reuters

Amazon Glacier is a new custom web service from the company that specializes in backing up users' files. The service was rolled out just after Wired reporter Mat Honan essentially dissolved by hackers in early August.

The online retail giant says that its service is different from alternatives on the market boasting cloud storage. Amazon has highlighted that Glacier boasts low cost, secure transfers and archive durability, as PC World notes.

"Amazon Glacier removes the need for complex and time-consuming capacity planning, ongoing negotiations with multiple hardware and software vendors, specialized training, and maintenance of offsite facilities or transportation of storage media to third part offsite locations," Amazon said on its website.

The main point is that Glacier is simple, and Amazon communicates that it is a user-friendly service, with no additional effort from customers.

But what exactly is Amazon Glacier? Before cautious users throw their personal data and information into the new storage system, here's a breakdown of what the service does and how it works.

1. Carefully decide what files and information you store. Unlike Amazon S3, Amazon Glacier is catered to long term storage options. Users will not be able to take out their data for some time once it's stored since the service is primarily intended to backup, as Wired reports. As the press release states, Amazon Glacier has been built to last "centuries."

2. How much does it cost? Users can sign up for Amazon Glacier and pay less than a penny per gigabyte per month. Prices also vary depending on region and size of the data, and the lowest advertised price is $0.01.

3. How do I get started? The first step is to create a named vault. Users are allowed to create up to 100 vaults per region. When that is done, simply upload your data to the vault.

4. How much can I store? Each archive can hold up to 40 Terabytes of data, and users have the option of using multipart uploading or AWS Import/Export to optimize the upload process. After this, Amazon Glacier will use AES-256 to encrypt your data.

5. Amazon Glacier is multipurpose. The service supports various uses, such as the archiving of enterprise information, research and scientific data, and digital preservation, as PC World notes.

Amazon Glacier is now available in regions of the United States such as Northern Virginia, Northern California and Oregon, as well as Ireland and Japan.

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