6 S3 Tricks You May Not Know About

S3 cloud storage is one of the most fundamental and popular products in the AWS ecosystem. What you might not know about S3 is that it has a number of features over and above simple cloud storage.

1. Storage Classes

S3 has a number of storage classes that you can use, depending on the use case for your data. Each storage class has its own set of features and benefits for users, making it easy to choose the one that best meets their needs.

One of the most popular storage classes is S3 Standard. This storage class provides high durability and availability, as well as a low latency for frequently accessed data. The S3 Standard-Infrequent Access class provides lower storage costs than S3 Standard, while still offering durability and availability. Most people know that there’s a storage class called Glacier that is much less expensive than S3 Standard. This is useful for archiving of documents, but it comes with the caveat that you don’t have immediate access to your files when you need them. The S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access and S3 Glacier classes provide even more cost savings, although at the expense of availability and durability. All S3 Storage classes also offer encryption capabilities, so users can secure their data in transit and when stored. Overall, the different S3 Storage classes provide users the flexibility to select the right solution for their data storage needs.

2. Static Site

AWS S3 Static Sites provide a convenient way to host Static Sites on Amazon’s cloud-based platform. These websites are built with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other client-side technologies and are useful for hosting web content such as images, audio, files, and video. With AWS S3 Static Sites, users can easily upload their content and manage their website from the convenience of one dashboard. They also benefit from low costs and high performance as the content is served directly from Amazon’s S3 storage service.

The use of AWS S3 Static Sites has a number of advantages for users. It reduces the complexity of website development by providing an easy-to-use interface that allows users to quickly create web pages and upload content without having to write complex code. Furthermore, since the content is served directly from the AWS S3 service, users benefit from the scalability and reliability provided by Amazon’s reliable storage solutions. The use of this type of hosting also provides increased security since the content is hosted on a secure and trusted platform, as well as redundancy protection in the event of any system failures. As a result, users can rest assured knowing their data is safe and secure.

3. Lifecycle Management

AWS S3 lifecycle management is a cost-saving feature that enables users to automate the storage and retrieval of data across different AWS storage classes. This helps to ensure that data is always stored in the most cost efficient storage class for any given situation. With S3 lifecycle management, users can define policies based on how long they need to access the data, and AWS will automatically migrate the data from one storage class to another based on these pre-defined policies. Automated storage migration reduces the complexity associated with managing multiple storage types, while also reducing overall costs by leveraging the lower-cost, long-term data storage options.

The benefits of S3 lifecycle management are numerous. It helps eliminate manual processes associated with data management by automating the transfer of data between different storage classes. Additionally, it can reduce storage costs by up to 35%, as well as provide users with greater control over their data retention and archiving processes. Furthermore, S3 lifecycle management offers advanced analytics and reporting capabilities, allowing users to monitor and analyze their data usage and trends. This helps users maximize their storage efficiency while minimizing their costs associated with data storage.

4. Versioning

AWS S3 Versioning is a feature of S3 which enables users to store multiple versions of an object in the same S3 bucket. It helps users with data protection by preserving, retrieving, and restoring every version of every object stored in an S3 bucket. Versioning provides easy access to past versions of objects and allows users to easily undelete objects they may have accidentally removed.

AWS S3 Versioning helps users protect their critical data from accidental deletion, as well as create additional copies of data that can be used for disaster recovery or other purposes. It also allows users to track changes made to objects over time, providing a practical way to audit and monitor changes. Versioning also helps to identify inappropriate access to data, allowing users to easily detect malicious activities. By enabling AWS S3 Versioning, users are able to quickly restore data and access a variety of versions of objects from their S3 buckets.

5. S3 Notifications

S3 notifications are a feature that enables notifications when events happen in your bucket. The notifications can be published on either the Simple Notification Service, the Simple Queue Service, or an AWS Lambda function. What that means, for instance,is that a new file object can be uploaded to a bucket which triggers a notification event that gets published to an SNS topic or an SQS queue, or starts a Lambda function running.

Currently, Amazon S3 can publish notifications for the following events:

• New object created events
• Object removal events
• Restore object events
• Reduced Redundancy Storage (RRS) object lost events
• Replication events
• S3 Lifecycle expiration events
• S3 Lifecycle transition events
• S3 Intelligent-Tiering automatic archival events
• Object tagging events
• Object ACL PUT events

You can request notification when an object is deleted or a versioned object is permanently deleted by using the s3:ObjectRemoved:Delete event type. Or you can request notification when a delete marker is created for a versioned object by using s3:ObjectRemoved:DeleteMarkerCreated. You can also use a wildcard s3:ObjectRemoved:* to request notification anytime an object is deleted. For information about deleting versioned objects, see Deleting object versions.

About AWS Lambda

AWS Lambda is a compute service that enables you to quickly and easily build applications that respond to new information. With AWS Lambda, your code can trigger events such as image uploads, in-app activity, website clicks, or outputs from connected devices. You can use AWS Lambda to extend the functionality of other AWS services with custom logic, or create your own backend which grows with drastic scalability, performance, and security. Additionally, you can run custom code in response to Amazon S3 bucket events by uploading code to AWS Lambda and constructing what is known as a Lambda function. When Amazon S3 detects an event such as an object created event, it will publish the event to AWS Lamba.

6. S3 Select

AWS S3 Select is a service that allows users to quickly and efficiently retrieve a subset of data from objects (files) stored in their S3 buckets. With S3 Select, users can query massive amounts of data with well known SQL tools like Apache Hive. This enables them to quickly obtain only the data they need without having to download it all.

The main advantage of using S3 Select is its ability to improve query performance time. By using S3 Select to review and aggregate data stored in S3, users can reduce the amount of time needed to generate reports and queries by up to 400%. Additionally, S3 Select supports columnar compression, allowing users to store more data while reducing costs associated with the storage space they are using. For example, S3 Select can compress a file containing 2GB of data down to only 200MB, resulting in significant cost savings for users.

The Swiss Army Knife of Storage

AWS S3 is an incredibly versatile cloud storage solution, making it a great option for businesses of any size. With features like Cross-Region Replication, Object Lifecycle Management, and support for popular development stacks like Node.js and Java, businesses can easily manage their data and utilize AWS services to grow and scale their applications. If you are exploring solutions for a project related to AWS S3, Lillibolero would be happy to provide advice and guidance on the best approach.