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Amazon S3 Multi-Region Access Points

Accelerate content transfers and failover between replicated datasets across AWS Regions

Overview

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) Multi-Region Access Points provide a global endpoint for routing Amazon S3 request traffic between AWS Regions. Each global endpoint routes Amazon S3 data request traffic from multiple sources, including traffic originating in Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs), from on-premises data centers over AWS PrivateLink, and from the public internet without building complex networking configurations with separate endpoints. Establishing an AWS PrivateLink connection to an S3 Multi-Region Access Point allows you to route S3 requests into AWS, or across multiple AWS Regions and accounts over a private connection using a simple network architecture and configuration without the need to configure a VPC peering connection. With Amazon S3 Multi-Region Access Points failover controls, you can route all S3 data request traffic through a single global endpoint and directly control the shift of S3 data request traffic between AWS Regions at any time. During a planned or unplanned regional traffic disruption, failover controls let you control failover between buckets in different AWS Regions and accounts within minutes.

Overview video: S3 Multi-Region Access Points

Watch an in-depth overview on Amazon S3 Multi-Region Access Points which accelerate performance by up to 60% when accessing datasets that are replicated across multiple AWS Regions.

Benefits

Amazon S3 Multi-Region Access Points accelerate multi-Region applications. By dynamically routing S3 requests made to a replicated data set via the AWS Global Accelerator, S3 Multi-Region Access Points reduce request latency, so that applications run up to 60% faster.
Application requests made to a S3 Multi-Region Access Point’s global endpoint automatically route over the AWS global network to the S3 bucket with the lowest network latency, allowing you to build multi-Region applications with the same simple application architecture that you would use in a single Region, and then run those applications anywhere in the world.
Amazon S3 Multi-Region Access Points failover controls let you control failover between buckets in different AWS Regions. You can test your application resiliency against a regional traffic disruption and switch between active and passive Regions within minutes.
Amazon S3 Multi-Region Access Points failover controls pair well with the Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage class for passive secondary and tertiary copies of replicated S3 data. Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering delivers automatic storage cost savings based on data access patterns without performance impacts. This can be ideal for passive secondary copies of your data that are rarely accessed. Then, when a failover between AWS Regions is initiated to make the passive Region copy active, there are no additional retrieval charges for interacting with infrequently accessed copies of data.
S3 Multi-Region Access Points provide global endpoints for Amazon S3 with dedicated access policies and centralized controls for S3 replication rules, failover between AWS Regions, and network routing. In the S3 console, S3 Multi-Region Access Points show a centralized view of the underlying replication topology, replication metrics, and failover control management of request routing configuration for your multi-Region S3 deployment. This gives you an even simpler way to build, manage, and monitor S3 data request traffic storage for multi-Region applications.

Use cases

Amazon S3 Multi-Region Access Points failover controls let you control the shift of S3 data request traffic between AWS Regions and redirect S3 traffic away from disruptions within minutes, to help build more highly available applications. With failover controls, you can operate S3 Multi-Region Access Points in an active-passive configuration and initiate a failover to shift S3 data request traffic to the chosen alternate AWS Region within minutes.

Test application resiliency against a regional traffic disruption to conduct application failure scenario testing and perform disaster recovery simulations. Easily shift S3 data request traffic through an S3 Multi-Region Access Point global endpoint from an active AWS Region to a passive AWS Region within minutes.

Clients such as public EC2 instances, EC2 instances using Internet Gateways (IGWs), and on premises that must connect to and accelerate requests to S3 can simplify applications and network architecture with a S3 Multi-Region Access Point. These requests will be routed over the AWS Global Network and then back to S3 within the Region without having to transverse the public internet to the lowest latency AWS Region.

Getting started with S3 Multi-Region Access Points

You can get started with S3 Multi-Region Access Points using the Amazon S3 API, CLI, SDKs, or the S3 console. The S3 console provides a guided workflow to configure S3 Multi-Region Access Points, S3 Cross-Region Replication Rules, and AWS VPC connections, including AWS PrivateLink.

In the S3 console, S3 Multi-Region Access Points show a centralized view of the underlying replication topology, failover controls, replication metrics, and your request routing configuration. This gives you an even easier way to build, manage, and monitor storage for multi-Region applications.

You can set up a S3 Multi-Region Access Point in three simple steps. First, you will receive an automatically generated S3 Multi-Region Access Point endpoint name, to which you can connect your clients. Second, you will select existing or create new S3 buckets that you would like to route requests between. Third, you will specify S3 Cross-Region Replication rules to apply to your buckets. Then, S3 will automatically create and configure your new multi-Region setup. Alternatively, you can use AWS CloudFormation to automate the creation and configuration of S3 Multi-Region Access Points. 

Access the S3 Multi-Region Access Points getting started tutorial and visit the user guide to get started.