Backup and Storage

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The Challenge

As the volume of data needing to be stored continues to grow, businesses are faced with increased data management complexity and costs. In addition, it has never been more important to protect data and ensure that it is highly durable and available. When researching a cloud-based solution for your data storage and backup, consider these questions:

• Can I access my storage from anywhere on the Internet? Can I control access?
• Can I scale my backup solution to meet the ever-increasing demands of my users or meet the needs of my fast-growing business?
• How can I minimize downtime and prevent data loss?
• How can I implement reliable, cost-effective back-up and disaster recovery plans?

Backup and Storage Using AWS

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) allows you to store and retrieve any amount of data at any time, from anywhere on the web. With Amazon S3, you have access to a highly scalable, reliable, fast, and inexpensive data storage infrastructure where you only pay for what you use – backed up by a Service Level Agreement (SLA). This storage infrastructure, provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS), enables you to take advantage of the expertise and economies of scale that Amazon has created supporting its own mission-critical infrastructure.

Amazon S3 stores billions of objects for thousands of customers around the world. Customers are using it for secure off-site backup, media storage and distribution, and much more. Many customers have created consumer and business-focused online storage solutions using Amazon S3 as their back-end provider. In addition, customers can choose the location they want their data stored (US or Europe) and Amazon S3 scales as needed, avoiding the overhead of maintaining in-house storage solutions.

If you have data sets of significant size, you can use AWS Import/Export to move large amounts of data into and out of AWS with physical storage devices. In many cases, using AWS Import/Export is faster than Internet transfer and more cost effective than upgrading your connectivity. This is ideal for moving large quantities of data for secure, long-term storage or quickly retrieving data for disaster recovery scenarios.

Additionally, you can employ the other components of AWS, such as Amazon EC2, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon CloudFront to build more complex backup and storage solutions. Amazon S3-based storage solutions also integrate with Amazon DevPay, allowing you to easily leverage Amazon’s proven billing and subscription management systems to help you bill for on-demand services provided through Amazon S3. Learn more about Amazon S3

Benefits at a Glance

Easy to use. Amazon S3 is designed with a simple access via HTTP and BitTorrent and a straightforward API through REST and SOAP. Customers have reported that they have been able to start using Amazon S3 within minutes or hours.

Flexible. Amazon S3 is accessible to any Internet-connected system that can use HTTP. There are no requirements on the structure of data stored in Amazon S3. Applications access Amazon S3 from easy to use web service APIs.

Cost-Effective. You pay only for the storage and bandwidth you use and you benefit from reduced pricing with increased volumes of storage.

Reliable. Amazon S3 stores multiple, redundant copies of your information so you don’t have to worry about ever losing your master copy.

Scalable and high-performance. Amazon’s massive compute capacity and storage enables you to scale your application’s storage requirements as your business grows.

Secure. AWS utilizes an end-to-end approach to secure and harden our infrastructure, including physical, operational, and software measures. You may transfer data over HTTPS to provide encryption on the wire, or you may choose to encrypt the content and decrypt inside your application. Also, Amazon S3 provides authentication mechanisms to ensure that data is kept secure from unauthorized access. Objects can be made private or public, and rights can be granted to specific users. For more information, consult the AWS Security Center.

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