How does Wasabi's minimum storage duration policy work?
Wasabi has a minimum storage duration policy, stating that if stored objects are deleted before they have been stored with Wasabi for a certain number of days, a Timed Deleted Storage charge equal to the storage charge for the remaining days will be applied. This policy is comparable to the minimum storage duration policies that exist with some AWS and other hyperscaler storage services.
Wasabi applies different minimum storage retention durations depending on the pricing model:
90 days (default) for customers using the Wasabi object storage Pay-as-You-Go (Pay-Go) pricing model.
Note the difference below for Wasabi Cloud NAS and Wasabi Surveillance Cloud customers.30 days for customers using Wasabi’s Reserved Capacity Storage (RCS) pricing model.
30 days for Wasabi Cloud NAS and Wasabi Surveillance Cloud customers using the Pay-Go pricing model.
To better understand how the minimum storage retention policy works, consider an example using a 90-day policy. The example scenario is:
An object is stored in Wasabi on Day 1
On Day 16, this object is deleted from Wasabi
In this example, you will be billed for:
15 days of Timed Active Storage
75 days of Timed Deleted Storage
What is the impact of Wasabi’s minimum storage retention policy on cost comparisons with AWS S3?
Although some AWS storage classes (for example, AWS Glacier) have similar minimum storage retention policies, AWS S3 Standard does not. The best way to answer this question is to compare the costs when 100 TB is stored in Wasabi and AWS S3.
If you delete the 100 TB of storage in less than 23 days, Wasabi will be more expensive than AWS S3. However, if you store the 100 TB of data for more than 23 days, Wasabi will be less expensive than AWS S3. After the first year, AWS S3 is approximately 4 times more expensive than Wasabi (and that is before you include the extra charges that AWS applies for egress and API requests).
In summary, if you have data that you only need to keep for short periods of time before deletion, it may be more cost-effective for you to store this data in AWS. However, as shown in this example, if you keep the data for more than 23 days, Wasabi is the more cost-effective solution.
What happens when the minimum storage duration policy is changed from 90 days to 30 days in Wasabi?
As described above, Wasabi’s minimum storage duration policy ensures a minimum billing period for any stored object, even if it is deleted earlier. If an object is removed before meeting its minimum retention duration, a Timed Deleted Storage charge is applied to account for the remaining days.
The following explains what happens when you change your minimum storage duration period from 90 days to 30 days, and how this change affects both existing and newly uploaded data in your Wasabi buckets.
The new 30-day minimum retention applies only to objects uploaded after the change is made.
Objects uploaded before the change will continue to follow the original 90-day retention policy.
If Wasabi implements the change to your minimum storage retention policy, your current billing cycle will end, and a new billing cycle will begin from the date of the change. As a result, an invoice will be generated for the current usage period up to that point, and your credit card will be charged accordingly.
Wasabi strongly recommends considering this before requesting a retention change, especially if aligning billing cycles is important to your operations.