Key Takeaways
- Apache Iceberg has become a key data lakehouse format, and many AWS customers are migrating from Glue-managed Iceberg tables to fully managed Amazon S3 Tables for better performance and automation.
- Clumio enables a smooth, Iceberg-aware migration process that helps maintain data integrity, metadata, and version history while adding air-gapped, immutable protection.
- The platform automates migration using a simple backup-and-restore workflow, helping reduce the need for custom scripts or manual configuration.
- Compared to manual or native AWS migration methods, Clumio offers a faster, more scalable, and resilient option for enterprise data lakehouse modernization.
- Clumio’s collaboration with AWS and availability in the AWS Marketplace enable organizations to modernize data lakes securely and confidently.
AI and latency-sensitive analytics workloads increasingly depend on data lakehouses as their underlying data architecture. Among AWS customers building these environments, Apache Iceberg has become one of the fastest-growing table formats on Amazon S3, providing the transactional consistency, schema evolution, and performance needed for modern analytics.
AWS customers manage Iceberg tables today through the AWS Glue Data Catalog or adopt AWS’s fully managed option, Amazon S3 Tables, to streamline operations and improve performance.
As AWS customers evaluate the growing importance of their Iceberg-based data lakehouses, considerations around protection, resilience, and migration to Amazon S3 Tables naturally become part of that planning. Many teams are now looking for a simple, reliable way to move from Glue-managed Iceberg tables to S3 Tables while strengthening the protection of these critical datasets.
As AWS’s 2025 Global Storage Partner of the Year, Commvault is deepening its collaboration with AWS to help customers modernize, protect, and optimize their cloud-native data.
Through Clumio, Commvault delivers an Iceberg-aware, air-gapped cyber resilience solution for AWS – and now helps automate migration from Iceberg tables registered in the AWS Glue Data Catalog to Amazon S3 Tables, while enabling long-term protection and recovery. You can start your free trial in the AWS Marketplace.
The Challenge: Limited Options for Moving to S3 Tables
Organizations are increasingly evaluating migrations from Glue-managed Iceberg tables to fully managed Amazon S3 Tables to improve data lake performance and simplify operations. According to AWS, S3 Tables can deliver up to 3 times faster query performance and up to 10 times higher transactions per second compared to Iceberg tables stored in general purpose S3 buckets.
Many teams also want to offload undifferentiated heavy lifting – such as compaction, snapshot management, and unreferenced file cleanup – while reducing overall storage and query costs.
However, existing AWS and community guidance, such as AWS’s migration framework, outlines a manual, multi-step process requiring custom scripting and orchestration. Migrating data while maintaining schema, metadata, and version history can be time-consuming and error-prone, and most current approaches focus on replication rather than Iceberg-aware recovery or rollback.
Clumio’s migration support for Apache Iceberg tables provides the Iceberg-aware, enterprise-grade migration and resilience capability that modern data lakehouses have been missing. Request a demo to see how Clumio streamlines your migration.
How Clumio Simplifies Migration and Protection
Clumio for Apache Iceberg on AWS helps automate migration from Iceberg tables registered in the AWS Glue Data Catalog to Amazon S3 Tables, while simultaneously enabling long-term protection for these modern data lakehouse assets.
The same Iceberg-aware platform provides air-gapped, immutable backups, isolated recovery points, point-in-time or snapshot-level restores, and retention capabilities that help support compliance requirements – extending Commvault’s leadership in cloud-native cyber resilience.
Migration and protection work hand in hand:
- Help protect Iceberg tables registered in the AWS Glue Data Catalog.
- Restore as fully managed Amazon S3 Tables.
- Continue helping protect those Iceberg tables with Clumio’s cyber resilience capabilities.
For teams that prefer Infrastructure-as-Code deployment, Clumio offers a publicly available Terraform module that supports Apache Iceberg.
As AWS customers adopt Amazon S3 Tables, protecting these modern data assets becomes even more important. Threat vectors such as ransomware, accidental deletion, malicious or mistaken changes, and account compromise can disrupt AI and analytics pipelines and lead to costly reprocessing. Clumio helps customers mitigate these risks with immutable, air-gapped backups and flexible recovery options across accounts, regions, snapshots, and points in time. For a deeper look at why data lakehouses need purpose-built protection, see Closing the Gap in Data Lakehouse Protection.
How It Works – From Backup to Restore
The migration process using Clumio follows a straightforward backup-and-restore workflow, designed to minimize effort and help maintain Iceberg table integrity.
Step 1: Connect with the Commvault team for migration program review and approval. Please contact us.
Step 2: Discover and back up Iceberg tables registered in the AWS Glue Data Catalog, with underlying data stored in S3, using Clumio.
Step 3: Restore Iceberg table backups – whether the full snapshot history, a selected subset, or a specific point-in-time version – as Amazon S3 Tables in any account or region.
Step 4: Enable incremental backups to maintain protection for your new Amazon S3 Tables.
Clumio’s architecture helps reduce the need for and helps provide transactionally consistent Iceberg recovery across accounts, regions, and snapshots.
To see the full migration workflow in action – including Iceberg discovery, backup selection, snapshot options, and restoration to Amazon S3 Tables – watch the demo video embedded below. It walks through the entire backup-and-restore flow end to end, showing how Clumio handles the data, metadata, and snapshot migration with no manual configuration required.
Comparing Migration Options
Most migrations to Amazon S3 Tables today depend on manual scripts or native tooling. Here’s how those methods compare against Clumio’s Iceberg-aware approach.
| DIY scripts/ open source tools |
Custom scripts using Athena or Glue APIs to copy data and metadata | Best suited for teams with scripting expertise and custom migration requirements |
| Native AWS processes/ snapshots |
AWS documentation and community guides outline snapshot-based or query-driven migrations | Suitable for teams using native AWS services and managing multi-step migration processes |
| Clumio | SaaS-based, Iceberg-aware backup and recovery solution for AWS | Simple, Iceberg-aware migration workflow that helps preserve metadata and snapshot lineage while integrating ongoing protection |
Request a demo to learn how Clumio simplifies migration at scale.
Why This Matters for AWS Customers
As AWS customers modernize their data lakehouses, they need a simple, scalable way to migrate Iceberg tables to Amazon S3 Tables and protect them against operational and cyber risks. Clumio delivers this by providing Iceberg-aware migration along with air-gapped, immutable protection.
AWS is working with Commvault to help customers use Clumio for both protection and migration to Amazon S3 Tables. The solution is available today in the AWS Marketplace and supports Iceberg tables across both Glue-managed and fully managed S3 Tables environments. Together, Commvault and AWS provide enterprises with a simple, scalable way to modernize their AI data pipelines.
For organizations looking to strengthen resilience across the broader AWS data stack, see our blogs on protecting Amazon S3 data with Clumio and Clumio Backtrack for Amazon DynamoDB.
If you’d like to discuss your AWS data modernization strategy, please contact us.
Moving Forward with Clumio and AWS
As organizations modernize their data platforms for AI, Clumio helps them migrate confidently to S3 Tables, maintain data integrity, and strengthen their cyber resilience. Clumio simplifies migration and protection – helping organizations protect, recover, and move their most valuable data faster.
Start your free trial in the AWS Marketplace.
FAQs
Q: Why are organizations moving from self-managed Iceberg tables to Amazon S3 Tables?
A: Many teams are migrating to S3 Tables to improve performance and simplify management. Amazon S3 Tables deliver up to three times faster query performance and 10 times higher transaction throughput than self-managed Iceberg tables while reducing operational overhead.
Q: How does Clumio simplify the migration process?
A: Clumio automates migration through a backup-and-restore workflow that maintains schema and metadata consistency. It avoids manual scripting and enables restoring Iceberg backups directly as S3 Tables across accounts and regions.
Q: What makes Clumio different from other migration approaches?
A: Unlike do-it-yourself scripts or AWS’s native methods, Clumio is Iceberg-aware and automated, and it offers built-in cyber resilience features such as immutable backups, point-in-time recovery, and retention capabilities that help support compliance requirements.
Q: How does Clumio enhance data protection during and after migration?
A: Clumio provides air-gapped, immutable backups that help protect against ransomware, accidental deletion, or malicious changes. It also supports flexible recovery across snapshots, accounts, and regions.
Q: Is Clumio available for AWS customers now?
A: Yes, Clumio is available in the AWS Marketplace and integrates with both AWS Glue and Amazon S3 Tables environments. customers to modernize and protect their AI data pipelines.
Q: What’s the first step to get started with Clumio for S3 Tables migration?
A: Organizations can start by contacting Commvault for migration program approval and then use Clumio to discover, back up, and restore Iceberg tables as Amazon S3 Tables. A free trial is available in the AWS Marketplace.
Vir Choksi is Principal Product Marketing Manager at Commvault.
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