Amazon S3 Reviews

I have different use cases. One major one is hosting static content for our legacy front-end application. We deploy all the static files to an S3 bucket, which is configured for web hosting. 

Additionally, we have an Akamai layer on top of S3, so all requests first hit Akamai and are then routed to S3, according to our HTML routing, before reaching the backend service.

It's very well secured. We have S3 policies that allow you to write custom policies. These control access to the users and can grant or deny permissions. Additionally, your buckets can be configured as private or public.

Amazon S3 offers multiple beneficial features. One advantage is static web hosting, which eliminates the need for a dedicated server. We also have S3 for storage, where we can upload necessary files for processing. 

Furthermore, it supports an SFTP service, where we set up an SFTP server on top of S3 and use credentials to transfer data from remote locations. 

S3's lifecycle policies are also crucial; they automate the deletion or downgrading of files that are no longer needed. Moreover, we can set permissions to restrict or allow user access to the data.

Using S3, we can load data into databases and trigger AWS Lambda functions, which enhances our operational flexibility.

Sometimes while using S3, I've wished for certain features.

One thing would be automatic replication between buckets, some feature like that.

I have been using it for more than five years. 

It's almost 100% stable. I've never seen S3 go down. It's always available. As mentioned in the documentation, it has 99.999999999% availability.

I would rate the stability a ten out of ten.

There are two aspects to consider regarding S3 scalability. While there is a hard limit of thousands of buckets per AWS account, there's virtually no limit on the amount of data you can store within a single S3 bucket.

Anyone with access to our AWS accounts has the potential to use S3. But in terms of my applications, nearly all of them utilize S3 in some way or another.

The customer service and support are highly skilled and technical. Whenever I have issues with any service, whether it's S3 or something else, I always get a resolution.

The response time is good. I've always been able to connect with an agent and resolve the issue on the spot.

Positive

There's Azure Block Storage and Google Cloud Storage.  

The initial setup is very straightforward. You just need to provide the bucket name, the region where you want it created, and some basic permissions. It's a three or four-step process.

Currently, I use the public cloud for my entire infrastructure. All the deployments are in the cloud.

The pricing is good. The main charges for S3 are data transfer and storage. You can create as many buckets as you need and manage them according to your requirements. Naturally, the more you use any service, the higher the cost.

I find it very useful. It's one of the best services out there. I'd give it a nine out of ten. I would recommend it – every user should utilize it for storage.

We have been using Amazon S3 to store some execution results. I am from a testing background. We use the solution to store execution results and whatever evidence we generate.

The solution's most valuable feature is its security, as it does not provide public access.

The solution could be cheaper. EC2 has a feature called get instant screenshot. It would be good if Amazon S3 had an API to get screenshots or video streaming continuously. There are cases where we want to see what is happening in real-time instead of connecting to Amazon EC2. It would be good if we could watch it like a video stream.

I have been using Amazon S3 for almost five years.

We have seen some downtime in the past four to five years, but it was nothing major. We were sometimes unable to launch the machines through code. We do not have a major production environment. We use it mostly for scenario testing, so the stability issue was okay for us. However, it would not be good if the tool went down when a person was deploying it.

There should be a reason or a log for the solution's downtime. When we make an API call, like SDK, it should throw an error or some information so that we know what exactly happened.

The solution’s initial setup is easy.

We don't use the solution for deployment. We use it to execute the scripts on virtual machines. We have a platform built where we click on something, and then the virtual machines get launched automatically based on a certain AMI image. It takes a lot of time, almost 15 to 20 minutes, to start the machine.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I use the solution in my company for different purposes. Currently, we just store some data there, like the backups we store or data that is not regularly accessed. We mostly use the tool to store data. It is actually for object storage, so too many objects we store in it.

With Amazon S3, we can manage everything through GUI as well as the command line interface, which is a good thing. Using versioning in S3 buckets is a good feature.

The tool's speed is comparatively low, especially considering that there are some other services where we can store data, like EBS. The speed is a little slower in Amazon S3. I don't know the solution for that, but Amazon can add some features to improve its speed.

I have been using Amazon S3 for three to four years. I am just a user of the tool.

If we have critical data, we store it in multiple regions. The cloud provides multiple regions or multiple easy options. The tool does not cause much downtime.

I work as a DevOps SRE engineer, along with five more members of my team, and we all use Amazon S3.

My company contacts the tool's support for billing-related issues. My company does not regularly contact the tool's support team. Most of the things related to the tool are available in the document.

The product's deployment phase is easy. We can do it using the command line interface and codes, Terraform, or some scripts. You can use the consoles as well for easy understanding.

We can manage the S3 buckets based on the requirements. There are different categories available, like reducing it if we don't have enough money to store it in multiple locations. Different standards, such as different S3 options, are available. One can manage the price of the tool. The tool is worth the money if we want to store the data in Amazon S3. We are storing things in Amazon S3 or wherever there is a remote cloud server so that you can access the data anywhere in the world. If your data needs to be accessed from anywhere in the world, you can store it on your local drive. You can set up a local system, but storing it in Amazon S3 means you can access it all over the world. There is no need for much configuration. The cloud providers provide a pay-as-you-use model. There is no need to pay for any setups. Based on data size, upload, and download requests, some money gets charged. It is easy to control pricing on the cloud. There is no need to have a deep knowledge of setting up the servers in the data center or in a local environment.

Firstly, one should try using the Amazon or AWS console itself. You can move the mouse around and find where the configuration things are there, how to create buckets, versioning, and other things, like downloading, uploading, and everything else. Learn the console and its basics. Secondly, you can move to the command line interface. With the command line interface, we can easily manage available AWS commands or AWS CLI options. Later, we can move to scripting. Using scripts, we can do the uploads, downloads, and changes, and all those things.

I believe it is easier to learn the tool than to learn the administrative skills needed to set up the servers or networks for the data configurations. It is a much more advanced task. Setting up Amazon S3 or using a cloud service is the easiest thing you can learn. You will get the tool's documents everywhere, explaining how to use the tool. Anyone, including non-technical people, can learn to use Amazon S3 and other cloud services.

I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

Amazon S3 is used for storage service. It's designed for 99.9% durability; hence, our data is highly protected against failures.

The most valuable feature of Amazon S3 is the data transfer acceleration because it can enable fast, easy, and secure data transfer.

The solution's cost should be improved.

The solution's performance needs to increase for small objects. Amazon S3 is excellent for large projects, but its performance can be comparatively slower for fewer small objects.

Amazon S3 is a stable solution.

Around 2,000 to 3,000 users use Amazon S3 in our organization.

The solution's initial setup is easy.

While storing data in Amazon S3 is relatively inexpensive, there are costs associated with retrieving or transferring data across continents. Connecting Amazon S3 with real-time applications can increase data retrieval costs.

Amazon S3 is deployed on-cloud in our organization. Our company decided to use Amazon S3 because of its global availability. AWS has multiple data centers around the world.

If you're using the public cloud, using Amazon S3 combined with Amazon S3 Glacier is correct. The data will be stored in Amazon S3 storage, and the cost will increase. Instead of keeping the data in Amazon S3, putting the archive file in Amazon S3 Glacier is better.

Overall, I rate Amazon S3 a nine out of ten.

I use the solution in my company mostly to store files. It is a file storage service.

I use many features in the tool, including data life cycle, automatic cleanup, and life cycle policies. I also use the tool's single-pane-of-glass view and dashboard. I don't know specifically what the important features are in the tool. The durability and availability features of Amazon S3 are amazing.

Everything around visibility, dashboards, and all of the statistics through which the tool provides information 24 hours a day means that it is not done on a real-time basis. It's sometimes needed for users to see some real-time information immediately and not have to wait for 24t hours till a report is generated. For me, getting reports on a real-time basis is critical, and it is an area that is missing in Amazon S3.

For the cleanup policy, when I opened a couple of tickets with the tool's support team, I did not get any clear information on how to deal with the restoration part. When my company approached the tool's technical support with some questions about how to organize data, view it, and how it is distributed across the buckets, we did not receive any clear answers. The tool's support team needs to improve.

I have been using Amazon S3 for ten years. I am an end user of the solution.

It is a very good and stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

The tool offers great scalability to its users. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

At least half of my organization uses the tool. Most of our company's applications deploy, provide, or utilize the services offered by Amazon S3.

The tool is used on a daily basis.

For the service provided by the solution's technical support, I rate the technical support a six to seven out of ten.

Neutral

With Amazon, you don't have any other equivalent services, so Amazon S3 is a standard tool to use. In other environments, very different services, very similar to Amazon S3, are present on GCP and Azure. On other platforms, we use the services provided by other clouds.

The product's initial setup phase is very easy.

The solution is deployed on the cloud. The tool can be deployed on an on-premises model.

The solution can be deployed in a few seconds.

Speaking about whether I have seen an ROI from using the tool, I would say that I know that it contains life cycle policies.

The tool's price is a little bit high, but it is reasonable.

The product is very deeply integrated with some of the tools that I use in my company. Amazon S3 is a part of the platform applications that we create and provide to customers.

I recommend the tool to others.

I rate the tool a seven to eight out of ten.

We use the solution to store BLOB data, analytical data, and large files.

We use S3 for archiving. We store data for the long term because it is very cheap.

The most valuable feature of the product is storage classes. Once we store data in S3, it will be stored in different storage classes as per our needs.

The UI should be more user-friendly. I rate the UI a five out of ten. The solution must improve its UI.

I have been using the solution for four years.

I rate the product’s stability a ten out of ten.

Since the solution is used for data storage, it is not scalable. Its availability is very good. I rate the availability a ten out of ten.

It is very easy to create a bucket in S3. The option to create buckets is available to the users right when they open the S3 console. We can just create a bucket and start using it.

We definitely see an ROI on the solution. We can store terabytes and zettabytes of data in S3. We pay very less for it.

The product has one of the best pricing in the market. It is very cost-efficient. The cost depends on the data we access. If we access a particular data regularly, we must pay for it. If we know that we will need the data after three to five years, we can store it in the archives, which will cost us less.

The product has no specific version. We can create buckets and use them. It is a data storage service like Google Drive. I have not used all the features of the product yet. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We use Amazon S3 for data storage purposes. We use the stored data for restoration or backup when there is a data leakage in websites and mobile applications. For enterprise-level applications, the stored data is also used for data analytics, backup, recovery, etc.

The tool helps us with data backup storage of payment files and helps us avoid issues with clients when we miss the data. For instance, in the payment file of my Google client, you can find details of one-to-one transactions like the payment information on the file header, payment ID, payment client ID, group headers, etc. We get these details into the file format of ISO which is the accepted format at JP Morgan & Chase. Once we get the file format, we process it through S3.

In S3, we do the syncing process where everything is automated as per the business logic. The data is sent to S3 after the syncing process. S3 will evaluate the data and the format and store it for backup purposes. Whenever we miss a payment, we can just recover the history from the storage bucket. So it helps us manage the features, cost, and regulatory aspects.

I like the S3 Lambda access point and S3 management console which helps with the filtering and returning of data.

Many customers use this tool. We use it for enterprise application data where we store all cloud-native application production data. You can upload any amount of data and access it from anywhere to deploy the applications. However, the tool needs to improve its performance. Clients can reach more end users if the overall process is faster.

The solution can be a perfect tool if it can add more S3 storage classes and manage the authorized users to one bucket and give access to the storage usage and activity trends.

I have been using the solution for the past two years.

The solution’s stability can have a rating of eight out of ten.

I would rate the solution’s scalability a seven out of ten. Scalability depends on the size of the data which can be zero bytes to five TB which is the largest.

I would rate the customer service and support a nine out ten. 

Positive

AWS S3’s setup is not complex, and in fact, manageable. The number of people required for deployment depends on the data. If it is a Single Page Application with single-page data, then one person is enough for the deployment. However, if there are payment files involved, then you need around three to four people in the team to deploy it on the cloud.

There is ROI with the use of the tool. Organizations can benefit from the tool with their business logic.

The tool is not too expensive considering the various pros.

I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. I am not sure about the solution’s version. It should be either four or five. I have practical knowledge of the tool like its implementation. We store data on the S3 bucket and take it to present to the database. The tool is manageable and maintainable by anyone for their work.

This is a perfect tool for data storage. It is good to use S3 as a storage bucket for data.

We use the solution to put our static web pages on the backend servers when we use Cloudfront if a transformation is required. When a request reaches Cloudfront, we have to mask some information in the response by transporting it.

The solution masks or transforms the request so the backend can understand them. For example, We have a proxy server in between the NGINX engine, and when a request hits the NGINX engine, it has a different format. The NGINX engine converts and secures the information before hitting the Cloudfront. We use the Lambda function which is a Python program so the code body stays in the Amazon S3 bucket and when a response is returned from the backend server we can mask some of the information, keeping only the required information for the end response.

I also use Amazon S3 for batch processing. Two gigabytes is a lot of data, especially if we are adding or updating information. If we have a Java application, it can take a long time to process two gigabytes of data. I split the data into multiple 50 or 30-MB files to make it easier to process.  I created a manifest file that specified which rows belonged to which files. Then I used the solutions batch processing with Lambda to create a pipeline that performs batch operations.

I use the solution for life cycle management. The information goes from the standard storage to the infrequent, and after 30 days it is moved to the glacier.

Amazon S3 provides us with a ready-made server. We have the option to secure our case from public access, We can give access to the targeted audiences only with the signed page and signed requests. A signed request is also provided to the target audience so that they can use the link for requesting the object to be seen by the Amazon S3 bucket. We have a cloud formation template that we restored into Amazon S3 and during the launch of the AWS services, we only needed to execute the command from the Amazon S3 bucket. With the solution, we can simply provide our resources and files to Amazon for the code references using Lambda functions instead of keeping tiny scripts in the Amazon S3 bucket to restore codes.

The integration with Cloudfront helps in fetching the static phase and default phases in case our actual service is down. Instead of our customers receiving a response that something is happening in the background and trying the site later, we can redirect our page from one page to another, using the Amazon S3 bucket links in Cloudfront.

I would like a batch downloading option added to the AWS console. If we have a bucket in Amazon S3 and for example, we have 50 files that we want to download locally on our system, we need to download them one by one. We can batch-download the files with the command, but from the AWS console, we cannot select all the files and download them into a folder. 

An option to delete multiple files at one time would be a nice feature to be added to the AWS console because we currently have to specify the individual file names. For example, if five files are present, and we want to delete them, then each file name has to be entered separately.

I have been using the solution for five years.

The solution is extremely stable. I give the stability ten out of ten.

The solution is scaled automatically because it is cloud-based. Whatever our demand is the solution has no limitations or restrictions. 

I give scalability ten out of ten.

We have only had the need for technical support three times using the solution and they were not able to resolve two of the issues because they were not supported by them. In most cases, we are able to resolve the issues using the information found on forums.

Neutral

Previously, we used our local hard disc and the local remote service. We were facing a lot of problems that cloud solutions have solved, like availability, and down servers or IP not reachable. 

The initial setup is straightforward. At the time of our deployment, we had one issue with our targeted audience not being able to access specific pages even after we followed the guidelines and video tutorials from AWS. This was three years ago and has probably been addressed. 

The deployment only takes a few minutes depending on the context. We just run our command from either the CLI or the AWS console and the smart configuration is complete.

Most of the time we work with our customers and they provide us with their network settings and all the AWS services that will be hosted in their network. Once a customer has created their accounts, and has applied their security and network settings, they provide us with the working space and using that information, we can deploy Amazon S3 to their network.

There is a 70 percent return on investment when transferring from external storage to Amazon S3.

The cost is based on the amount of storage required and if we exceed the data transfer rate across regions.

If we use an external encryption key and not the one included by AWS, the data transfer between the key server and our Amazon S3 server will incur a charge.

I give the solution ten out of ten.

The solution is a web service that is hosted on the cloud only. Even if we tried to deploy it on-premise, we couldn't because AWS has the outpost service. Outposts are a way to create an AWS cloud environment locally, but some services are not available. S3 is a regional service and has to be serverless. 

Amazon S3 doesn't require any maintenance except perhaps one or two people for identity access management and a way to validate users.

All of our AWS developers use Amazon S3 including our migration people who have to take a backup using the solution for all the projects.

Amazon S3 is the perfect service for all applications for personal use. Anyone can use this solution regardless of their location with an AWS user account. The solution offers good web service and is perfect for anyone that wants to set up a minimal startup static web page for information purposes easily.