2 min Applications

AWS introduces S3 Access Points for better management of shared data

AWS introduces S3 Access Points for better management of shared data

At re:Invent, Amazon Web Services introduced a new service called Amazon S3 Access Points. The service is designed to help customers manage shared datasets better.

The service allows users to customise the access rules for each application. The idea is to simplify the management and access of data on a large scale for apps using shared datasets on the Amazon S3 storage service.

“S3 Access Points are unique hostnames with dedicated access policies that describe how data can be accessed using that endpoint,” Brandon West, AWS’ developer evangelism leader for the Americas, said in a blog post. “Before S3 Access Points, shared access to data meant managing a single policy document on a bucket. These policies could represent hundreds of applications with many differing permissions, making audits, and updates a potential bottleneck affecting many systems.”

The S3 Access Points solution bypasses that, by allowing users to add access points when they add applications or teams. This makes it easier to keep policies specific and easier to manage. Buckets can have multiple access points, with their own AWS Identity and Access Management policies. S3 Access Points can also be limited to a Virtual Private Cloud to protect S3 data in a private network.

“With S3 Access Points, you can customise hostnames and permissions for any user or application that needs access to your shared data set,” West stated.

More updates

In addition to S3 access points, improvements to Redshift were also announced to ensure better query performance. RA3 instances also provide the possibility to optimise resources separately for certain tasks.

Furthermore, an “UltraWarm” storage for ElasticSearch was announced, with which 900 terabytes of relatively little used data can be stored. A new managed preview of Apache Cassandra, a cloud database compatible with the open source version of Cassandra, has also been announced.