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Code & Whisky edited this page Aug 20, 2025 · 1 revision

Here’s a comprehensive list of Amazon S3 bucket best practices for data storage, categorized into security, performance, cost optimization, organization, and compliance — following AWS Well-Architected and industry standards:

References

🔒 Security Best Practices

  1. Block Public Access by Default

    • Enable "Block all public access" unless explicitly required.
    • Use pre-signed URLs for controlled temporary access.

  2. Encryption

    • Enable Server-Side Encryption (SSE-S3 or SSE-KMS) for data at rest.
    • Use TLS (HTTPS) for data in transit.

  3. IAM Best Practices

    • Apply least privilege principle with IAM roles & policies.
    • Avoid using root credentials.
    • Use bucket policies sparingly, prefer IAM policies for access control.

  4. Access Logging & Monitoring

    • Enable S3 server access logs or CloudTrail Data Events.
    • Monitor using Amazon GuardDuty and AWS Config.

  5. Versioning & Object Lock

    • Enable versioning to protect against accidental deletions/overwrites.
    • Use S3 Object Lock (compliance or governance mode) to prevent malicious or accidental deletions.

⚡ Performance & Scalability

  1. Use Intelligent Naming Conventions

    • Avoid sequential object prefixes (e.g., 0001.jpg, 0002.jpg).
    • Use randomized prefixes or UUIDs for better partitioning & parallel performance.

  2. S3 Storage Classes

    • Match storage class with workload:

      • Standard for frequent access.
      • Standard-IA / One Zone-IA for infrequent access.
      • Glacier / Deep Archive for archival.
      • Intelligent-Tiering for unpredictable patterns.

  3. Multipart Upload

    • For large files (>100MB), use multipart upload for resilience and parallelism.

  4. Data Transfer Acceleration (DTA)

    • Use S3 Transfer Acceleration for cross-region uploads/downloads.

  5. Edge Optimization

    • Use Amazon CloudFront in front of S3 for global content delivery.

💰 Cost Optimization

  1. Lifecycle Policies

    • Transition old data to cheaper storage tiers (IA, Glacier).
    • Expire objects when no longer needed.

  2. Delete Old Versions & Unused Objects

    • Use lifecycle rules to clean up old versions in versioned buckets.

  3. Monitor Costs

    • Use AWS Cost Explorer and S3 Storage Lens for visibility.

  4. Intelligent-Tiering

    • Let AWS automatically move data between storage classes based on access frequency.

📂 Organization & Data Management

  1. Tagging & Metadata

    • Use object tags for cost allocation, data classification, and automation.

  2. Folder Structure & Naming Standards

    • Define logical prefixes (e.g., /raw/, /processed/, /archive/).
    • Avoid unnecessary deep folder hierarchies (S3 is flat).

  3. Event Notifications

    • Integrate with SNS, SQS, Lambda for event-driven data pipelines.

  4. Data Consistency

    • S3 provides strong read-after-write consistency (as of Dec 2020).
    • Design applications to leverage this for real-time workloads.

✅ Compliance & Governance

  1. Data Residency & Replication

    • Use Cross-Region Replication (CRR) for DR and compliance.
    • Use Same-Region Replication (SRR) for compliance requirements within a region.

  2. Retention & Legal Holds

    • Enforce WORM (Write Once, Read Many) using Object Lock for compliance.

  3. Auditing & Reporting

    • Use AWS Config Rules to enforce security posture.
    • Enable S3 Inventory reports for tracking objects and encryption status.

👉 In summary:

  • Secure by default (encryption, IAM, no public access)
  • Organize with naming, tagging, versioning
  • Optimize for cost (lifecycle, storage class, deletion policies)
  • Design for performance (multipart uploads, CloudFront, random prefixes)
  • Ensure compliance (replication, Object Lock, logging, monitoring)
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