If I store critical data in an Amazon S3 bucket, do I need to keep a backup copy somewhere else, or duplicate everything to a second bucket?
I searched high and low for an answer to the question, and couldn’t find a definitive word. I guess I should have read Amazon’s own design requirements first…
Amazon S3 was built to fulfill the following design requirements:
[ ... ]Reliable: Store data durably, with 99.99% availability. There can be no single points of failure. All failures must be tolerated or repaired by the system without any downtime.
So there you go. Amazon S3′s massive infrastructure acts as a backup unto itself. If you store data in a bucket, it’s already being duplicated behind the scenes. Good stuff.
I always enjoy learning how other people employ Amazon S3 online storage. Check out my very own tool CloudBerry Explorer that helps to manage S3 on Windows . It is a freeware. http://cloudberrylab.com/
Backups aren’t just for drive failures. If someone gains control of your account, he can delete all your data. It doesn’t even have to be malicious . . . it could just be an errant program you’re using. In these cases, S3 may be working fine, but you just lost your only copy of your data.
Great point, Kevin. Assuming your an S3 user, what do you do to backup/duplicate your S3 buckets?