If I already have files in an S3 bucket in the Glacier storage class, what happens if I apply a bucket policy to move to Glacier after 1 day?

Question

We have a pre-existing S3 bucket that we are looking to add a lifecycle policy to in order to move large files in S3 standard to Glacier. The bucket already contains items with the Glacier storage class (changed manually via console). How does the lifecycle policy handle files that are already in Glacier? Will they be skipped or will they be moved again?

Question comes mostly because of a previous experience adding a transition to Deep Archive policy to files that were in Glacier that resulted in an early deletion from Glacier charge that was not ideal (since the files were in the Glacier storage tier for less than 90 days).

Also have a small test going in a test bucket tonight to see how it behaves but was curious if anyone had experience in a production environment?

Answer 1

If you create a policy to move S3 standard tier objects to Glacier tier, objects already in glacier tier are not changed.

The reason you were charged when you moved from glacier to deep archive tier is the minimum time commitment policy. S3 standard has no minimum time policy.