Backup strategy for user uploaded files on Amazon S3? [closed]

Question

We're switching from storing all user uploaded files on our servers, to using Amazon S3. It's approx. 300 GB of files.

What is the best way to keep an backup of all files? I've seen a few different suggestions:

• Copy bucket to a bucket in a different S3 location
• Versioning
• Backup to an EBS with EC2

Pros/cons? Best practice?

Answer 1

What is the best way to keep an backup of all files?

In theory, you don't need to. S3 has never lost a single bit in all these years. Your data is already stored in multiple data centers.

If you're really worried about accidentally deleting the files, use IAM keys. For each IAM user, disable the delete operation. And/or turn on versioning and remove the ability for an IAM user to do the real deletes.

If you still want a backup, EBS or S3 is pretty trivial to implement: Just run an S3 Sync utility to sync between buckets or to the EBS drive. (There are a lot of them, and it's trivial to write.) Note that you pay for unused space on your EBS drive, so it's probably more expensive if you're growing. I wouldn't use EBS unless you really had a use for local access to the files.

The upside of the S3 bucket sync is you can quickly switch your app to using the other bucket.

You could also use Glacier to backup your files, but that has some severe limitations.