Overview

Automatically upload form files to an AWS S3 bucket and path.

What you need

• An active Feathery account and form
• An active AWS account

Background

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3) is a scalable object storage service used for storing and retrieving any amount of data from anywhere on the web.

Benefits

Considerations

Cost:

• Storage Costs: Consider the cost per GB for storing data in S3.
• Request Costs: Evaluate costs for PUT, GET, and other requests.
• Data Transfer Costs: Take into account the costs associated with transferring data in and out of S3.
• Additional Services: Factor in the cost of additional services like Glacier for archiving.

Data Security:

• Encryption: Assess the encryption options for data at rest and in transit.
• Access Control: Consider the granularity of access controls, such as IAM policies, bucket policies, and ACLs.
• Compliance: Ensure S3 meets the compliance requirements relevant to your industry (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA).

Durability and Availability:

• Durability: S3 is designed for 99.999999999% durability.
• Availability: Evaluate the availability guarantees and how they align with your uptime requirements.
• Redundancy

Performance:

• Latency: Understand the typical latency for data access.
• Throughput: Evaluate the data throughput capabilities, especially for large-scale applications.
• Consistency: S3 offers eventual consistency for overwrite PUTS and deletes in all regions, but read-after-write consistency for PUTS of new objects in most regions.

Scalability:

• Storage Limits: Assess the scalability limits and how S3 can handle large amounts of data.
• Growth: Consider how S3 can accommodate future growth without manual intervention.

Data Management:

• Lifecycle Policies: Evaluate the lifecycle management features for automatic data tiering and expiration.
• Versioning: Consider the versioning capabilities for data protection and recovery.
• Replication: Assess the cross-region replication features for data redundancy.

Integration:

• AWS Ecosystem: Look at how well S3 integrates with other AWS services (e.g., Lambda, RDS, Redshift).
• Third-Party Tools: Evaluate compatibility with third-party tools and services.

Compliance and Governance:

• Audit Logging: Ensure S3 provides adequate logging and monitoring capabilities (e.g., CloudTrail, S3 Access Logs).
• Tagging: Assess the tagging features for resource management and cost allocation.

Data Access Patterns:

• Frequency of Access: Understand your data access patterns to choose the appropriate storage class (e.g., Standard, Intelligent-Tiering, Glacier).
• Data Retrieval Times: Consider the retrieval times for different storage classes, especially for infrequently accessed data.

Vendor Lock-In:

• Migration: Consider the ease of migrating data to and from S3.
• Interoperability: Evaluate the support for interoperability with other cloud providers or on-premises storage solutions.