Elastic has introduced a new "frozen tier" in version 7.12, which allows users to decouple compute from storage by directly searching data stored in object stores like AWS S3, Microsoft Azure Storage, and Google Cloud Storage without needing to rehydrate it. This advancement significantly reduces storage costs, offering up to 90% savings over traditional hot or warm tiers and 80% over the cold tier, while still maintaining searchability through Elasticsearch and integration with Kibana dashboards. The frozen tier eliminates the need for local data storage by utilizing searchable snapshots, and it retains a local cache for recently queried data to enhance performance. This development is part of Elastic's broader data lifecycle management strategy, which includes hot, warm, cold, and now frozen tiers, providing a cost-effective solution for storing and searching large volumes of IT data for observability, security, and compliance purposes. Elastic also offers a repository test kit for validating S3-compatible object stores, although official support is limited to specific platforms. The frozen tier is currently available as a technical preview in Elastic 7.12 and is accessible on Elastic Cloud, with further enhancements like a user-friendly slider expected soon.