Choosing an AWS storage service
Taking the first step
Purpose |
Help determine which AWS storage service is the best fit for your organization. |
Last updated |
June 26, 2024 |
Covered services |
Introduction
AWS offers a broad portfolio of reliable, scalable, and secure storage services for storing, accessing, protecting, and analyzing your data. This makes it easier to match your storage methods with your needs, and provides storage options that are not easily achievable with on-premises infrastructure. When selecting a storage service, ensuring that it aligns with your access patterns will be critical to achieving the performance you want.
You can select from block, file, and object storage services as well as cloud data migration options for your workload. Choosing the right storage service for your workload requires you to make a series of decisions based on your business needs.
This decision guide will help you ask the right questions, provide a clear path for implementation, and help you migrate from your existing on-premises storage.
Understand
Data is a cornerstone of successful application deployments, analytics workflows, and machine learning innovations. Well-architected systems use multiple storage services and enable different features to improve performance.
In many cases, however, choosing the right storage service will start with how well it aligns with what you're already using (or are familiar with). Working with storage services that you are familiar with will make it easier for you to get started - and can make migration of your data easier and potentially faster.

For example, services in the Amazon FSx data storage family come in four options that align to popular file systems:
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Amazon FSx for Windows File Server provides fully managed Microsoft Windows file servers, backed by a fully native Windows file system.
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Amazon FSx for Lustre allows you to launch and run the high-performance Lustre file system.
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Amazon FSx for OpenZFS a fully managed file storage service that enables you to move data to AWS from on-premises ZFS or other Linux-based file servers.
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Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP a fully managed service that provides highly reliable, scalable, high-performing, and feature-rich file storage built on NetApp's popular ONTAP file system.
Definitions
There are AWS service options for the following storage types:
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Block — Block storage is technology that controls data storage and storage devices. It takes any data, like a file or database entry, and divides it into blocks of equal sizes. The block storage system then stores the data block on underlying physical storage in a manner that is optimized for fast access and retrieval.
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File system — File systems store data in a hierarchical structure of files and folders. In network environments, file-based storage often uses network-attached storage (NAS) technology. NAS allows users to access network storage data in similar ways to a local hard drive. File storage is user-friendly and allows users to manage file-sharing control.
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Object — Object storage is a technology that stores and manages data in an unstructured format called objects. Each object is tagged with a unique identifier and contains metadata that describes the underlying content.
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Cache — A cache is a high-speed data storage layer used to temporarily store frequently accessed or recently used data closer to the point of access, with the aim of improving system performance and reducing latency. It serves as a buffer between the slower and larger primary storage (such as disks or remote storage) and the computing resources that need to access the data.
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Hybrid/Edge — Hybrid/Edge storage combines on-premises storage infrastructure with cloud storage services, allowing data mobility between the two environments based on requirements like performance, cost, and compliance. It provides benefits such as low-latency access, cost optimization, data sovereignty, cloud scalability, and business continuity.
Migration options
In addition to choosing a storage service, you will need to make choices about how you migrate your data to live within the chosen services. AWS offers several choices to migrate your data - based on whether it needs to live online or offline.
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Online migration involves transferring data and applications over the internet while they are still running in the on-premises data center. This approach can be more efficient than offline migration since it minimizes downtime and enables organizations to start using cloud resources sooner. However, it requires a reliable internet connection and may not be suitable for large amounts of data or mission-critical applications.
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Offline migration involves moving data and applications without any connection to the internet. This approach requires physically transporting the data on external hard drives or other storage media to the cloud provider’s data center. This method is typically used when there are large amounts of data to transfer, limited bandwidth or connectivity, or concerns about security and privacy.
There are two key considerations:
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Speed - Choose online migration when speed matters. Online is measured in minutes or hours, and offline can be measured by days. If data is frequently updated and time-critical, choose online. Choose offline when it’s a one-time move, and not time-critical.
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Bandwidth - Moving data online takes away from available bandwidth used for day-to-day. Choose offline when there are network constraints, and data can be offline while in transit without disrupting your business. AWS services in the Snow Family offer an option for offline migration.
Consider
You might be considering AWS storage services because you are migrating an existing application to the cloud or building a new application in the cloud. When moving data to the cloud, it is important for you to understand where you are moving it, the potential use cases, the type of data you are moving, and the network resources available.
Here's some of the criteria to consider when choosing an AWS storage service.
AWS storage services offer multiple protocol options:
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Block storage offers high-performance storage that is direct-attached to a compute instance with low-latency access, making it suitable for applications that require fast and consistent I/O operations.
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File-based storage is natively mountable from virtually any operating system using industry-standard protocols like NFS and SMB. It provides simple storage for workloads that need access to shared data across multiple compute instances.
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Object storage provides easy access to data through an application programming interface (API) over the internet and is well-suited to read-heavy workloads (such as streaming applications and services).
Protocols play a crucial role when considering AWS storage services as they determine how data is accessed, transferred, and managed within the storage environment.
Choose
Now that you know the criteria you should use to evaluate your storage options, you are ready to choose which AWS storage services are right for your business needs.
The following table highlights which storage options are optimized for which circumstances. Use it to help determine the one that is the best fit for your use case.
Storage type | What is it optimized for? | Storage services or tools |
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Block | Applications requiring low-latency, high-performance durable storage attached to single Amazon EC2 instances or containers, such as databases and general-purpose local instance storage. | |
File system |
Applications and workloads requiring shared read and write access across multiple Amazon EC2 instances or containers, or from multiple on-prem servers, such as team file shares, highly-available enterprise applications, analytics workloads, and ML training. |
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Object | Read-heavy workloads such as content distribution, web hosting, big data analytics, and ML workflows. Well-suited for scenarios where data needs to be stored, accessed, and distributed globally over the internet. | |
Cache |
Fully managed, scalable, and high-speed cache on AWS for processing file data stored in disparate locations—including on premises NFS file systems, and/or in cloud file systems (Amazon FSx for OpenZFS, Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP), and Amazon S3. |
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Hybrid/Edge |
Deliver low-latency data to on-premises applications and providing on-premises applications access to cloud-backed storage. |
The following table provides a detailed look at your online and offline options.
Migration options | When speed is the priority | When bandwidth is important | Storage services or tools |
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Online | Online is optimized for frequent updates to data. Use it for time-critical or ongoing workloads. | Consider scheduling your transfer during off hours when you have sufficient bandwidth. | |
Offline |
Suitable for one-time or periodic uploads - and when data can be static in transit. |
This choice makes sense when you need to use only the minimum available bandwidth - and you prefer the predictability of physical moves. |
Use
Now that you have determined the best protocol you need to work with your data, your performance requirements, and other criteria discussed in this guide, you should also have an understanding of which storage service would be the best fit for your needs.
To explore how to use and learn more about each of the available AWS storage services - we have provided a pathway to explore how each of the services work. The following section provides links to in-depth documentation, hands-on tutorials, and resources to get you started.
![]() Getting started with Amazon S3 This guide will help you get started with Amazon S3 by working with buckets and objects. A bucket is a container for objects. An object is a file and any metadata that describes that file. |
![]() Optimizing Amazon S3 performance When building applications that upload and retrieve storage from Amazon S3, follow the AWS best practices guidelines in this paper to optimize performance. |
![]() Amazon S3 tutorials The following tutorials present complete end-to-end procedures for common Amazon S3 tasks. These tutorials are intended for a lab-type environment and provide general guidance. |
Explore
Architecture diagrams Explore reference architecture diagrams for containers on AWS. |
Whitepapers Explore whitepapers to help you get started and learn best practices. |
AWS Solutions Explore vetted solutions and architectural guidance for common use cases for containers. |
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