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Great for archive data & web apps via API
June 20, 2021

Great for archive data & web apps via API

Sam Othman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)

We mostly use this for archiving old data that is infrequently accessed. It has been a good low-cost solution to get away from using on-prem NAS or even further back external hard disks and even CDs. It has ticked a lot of boxes for us in the sense of keeping this data safe and secure without the potential of data loss through external methods.
  • Low cost
  • Multiple tiers of storage
  • Great API
  • Not a lot of features.
  • Can be complex to set up properly.
  • Guaranteed data integrity.
  • Secure storage for uploaded data via web.
  • No more NAS/External HDD/CD requirements.
We have not had to contact the support team for this service as we have quite a strong team in-house and each of us has a skill set that complements the others. We generally find our way through most things through trial and error and S3 has been no different. AWS in general has its own logic and it can take a little bit to get your head around it and get it configured right, but once you are at that point, it just works without any hiccups or downtime.

Do you think Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)'s feature set?

Yes

Did Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) again?

Yes

It is tricky to get it all set up correctly with policies and getting the IAM settings right. There is also a lot of lifecycle config you can do in terms of moving data to cold/glacier storage. It is also not to be confused with being a OneDrive or SharePoint replacement, they each have their own place in our environment, and S3 is used more by the IT team and accessed by our PHP applications. It is not necessarily used by an average everyday user for storing their pictures or documents, etc.
For archiving old data that is infrequently accessed it is perfect. You can choose to let it go into cold/glacier storage which saves even further costs but at the expense of accessibility. I like that you can set access rules to automatically move it to the next storage tier after a certain amount of time that it has not been accessed.

I also use it a lot with PHP via the API. We have some custom in-house applications that have a fair amount of data uploaded into them. S3 has been a perfect solution to store these files, taking the load off web servers and never having issues with running out of storage.