To S3 or not to S3, that is the question... Amazon S3 is the answer!
March 29, 2019
To S3 or not to S3, that is the question... Amazon S3 is the answer!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
Amazon S3 is a foundational element used throughout our organization. It is used by applications to store documents, archive phone calls, store/share files, retain backups, transfer files to/from customers, etc.
It allows us to set metadata which also allows files to clean up after itself, which prevents our organization from storing information longer than needed which is wonderful (and keeps us only paying for what we really need to store). S3 is our go-to for any cloud storage needs as well as a location to host static content distributed through Cloudfront and provide public access to files as needed.
It allows us to set metadata which also allows files to clean up after itself, which prevents our organization from storing information longer than needed which is wonderful (and keeps us only paying for what we really need to store). S3 is our go-to for any cloud storage needs as well as a location to host static content distributed through Cloudfront and provide public access to files as needed.
- It has a good command line interface making it easy to use from anywhere
- It has a well-built SDK across many languages allowing applications to integrate
- You only pay for what you use, so there is no need to upgrade/downgrade storage capacity
- S3 allows objects to store metadata allowing some very useful options (such as object expiration)
- You can now use it to also see the metadata within your objects, such as images/videos metadata (location, duration, capture date, etc)
- IAM allows you to control access to S3 to set proper permissions
- It could be useful to have reports showing file usage/aging
- It would be nice to be ale to query S3 without the need to look at each and every object
- It allows our products to scale without the need to worry about disk space filling up.
- It is wonderful to only pay for what is being used.
- Because it can be accessed from anywhere, S3 is always there when you need it.
We originally were looking between FTP and Amazon S3 as a storage location for customer-created files. FTP had been used for years, but as it was a new product were didn't understand how much utilization would be needed. Amazon S3 won out because it was easier to integrate into our different application stacks as well as had a better pricing structure than the FTP resource we were investigating.