Title

AWS re:Invent 2022 - Gain insights into storage usage at scale with Amazon S3 Storage Lens (STG320)

Summary

• Amazon S3 Storage Lens is an analytics service providing organization-wide visibility with activity and usage metrics.
• It offers an interactive dashboard experience, centralized view across accounts and buckets, and the ability to drill down to account, bucket, region, and prefix levels.
• Storage Lens metrics can be accessed via the S3 console, metrics export feature, and CloudWatch.
• A study showed customers using Storage Lens saw more than six times return on investment.
• The service is built on customer feedback, desiring easy visibility, data analysis at different granularity levels, and actionable insights.
• At re:Invent 2020, S3 Storage Lens was launched, offering 29 granular metrics.
• New metrics have been introduced, doubling the count to over 60, enabling advanced use cases for cost optimization, data protection, access management, detailed status code analysis, performance, and events.
• The pricing model remains the same, with a free tier and a paid tier at $0.20 per million objects monitored per month.
• The new metrics include bucket properties metrics, which are based on bucket-level configurations, useful for auditing bucket settings.
• Use cases for the new metrics include simplifying access management, understanding request patterns, optimizing storage costs, and auditing data protection features like versioning, replication, and encryption.

Insights

• The introduction of new metrics in S3 Storage Lens significantly enhances the ability to monitor and optimize storage at scale, particularly for large organizations with complex storage needs.
• The focus on cost optimization and data protection suggests that AWS is responding to customer needs for more efficient and secure storage management.
• The integration with CloudWatch and the ability to export metrics allows for flexibility in how users can access and utilize their data, catering to different preferences and workflows.
• The study indicating a six-fold return on investment for customers using Storage Lens underscores the potential financial benefits of effectively managing storage with the right tools.
• The session highlighted the importance of lifecycle policies, multi-part uploads, and encryption in managing costs and ensuring data protection, reflecting common challenges faced by AWS customers.
• The pricing model, which remains unchanged despite the addition of new metrics, suggests AWS's commitment to providing value without increasing costs for its users.
• The detailed walkthrough of use cases and practical examples provided by the speakers demonstrates AWS's approach to educating customers on leveraging new features to address specific storage challenges.