AWS S3 Cross-Region Replication
Amazon S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) is a feature that automatically replicates objects in an S3 bucket from one AWS region to another region. It provides redundancy and allows us to store multiple copies of your data in different geographic locations.
How S3 Cross-Region Replication Works:
- Source and Destination Buckets: We define a source S3 bucket (where the original data is stored) and a destination S3 bucket in a different AWS region (where the data will be replicated).
- Automatic Replication: Once enabled, any new objects or changes (e.g., updated metadata) to objects in the source bucket are automatically replicated to the destination bucket.
- Same or Different Accounts: Replication can occur between buckets in the same AWS account or between different accounts.
Key Benefits:
- Disaster Recovery: Ensures that your data is stored in multiple geographic locations, enhancing business continuity in case of regional outages.
- Compliance Requirements: Helps meet regulatory or compliance requirements by keeping copies of data in specific regions.
- Performance: Improves performance by serving requests from a bucket closer to the users’ region.
- Versioning Support: When versioning is enabled on both source and destination buckets, S3 CRR replicates all versions of an object, ensuring that deleted or overwritten objects are also replicated.
Considerations:
- Cost: We are charged for the replication of objects and storage in the destination region, along with any associated request fees.
- Latency: There may be some delay in replication, as objects are not immediately copied to the destination bucket upon creation.
S3 CRR is typically used for backup and recovery, data sovereignty, compliance, or reducing latency for users in different regions.