Amazon Web Services, Inc.†(AWS), an†Amazon.com†company (NASDAQ: AMZN), announced eight new storage services and capabilities, including:
- Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering†is a new Amazon S3 storage class that automatically optimizes customers’ storage costs for data with unknown or changing access patterns by moving data to the most cost-effective storage tier
- Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive is a new storage class that delivers the lowest cost storage from any cloud provider at just†$0.00099†per GB-month (less than one-tenth of†one cent, or†$1†per TB-month)
- Amazon S3 Batch Operations is a bulk storage management and automation feature that makes it easy for customers to execute AWS Lambda functions or apply other changes to billions of objects
- Amazon FSx for Windows File Server†provides fully managed Windows-based shared file storage designed to help customers lift-and-shift their applications to AWS
- Amazon FSx for Lustre†is a fully managed file system that is optimized for compute-intensive workloads, such as high-performance computing, machine learning, and media data processing workflows
- Amazon EFS Infrequent†is a new storage class for Amazon EFS that is designed for files accessed less frequently, enabling customers to reduce storage costs by up to 85% compared to the EFS Standard storage class
- AWS DataSync†is a data transfer service that uses network accelerations to make it easy for customers to automate moving data between on-premises storage and Amazon S3 or Amazon EFS
- AWS Transfer for SFTP†is a fully managed service that enables customers to transfer files directly into and out of Amazon S3 using the Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)—also known as Secure Shell (SSH) File Transfer Protocol
“Our customers tell us that storage is foundational to everything they do,” said†Bill Vass, VP Engineering, AWS. “By fully managing services for our customers, including all of the storage infrastructure, we make it easy and cost-effective for them to scale their business applications quickly and massively. As you can see from the announcements today, we’re not close to being done innovating across our storage services to enable the best performance for all types of applications, automate storage management, simplify and accelerate data migration, and reduce customers’ costs.”
New object storage classes and features expand the most popular cloud storage service
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) offers customers the best scalability, data availability, security, and performance, enabling customers of all sizes to store and protect any amount of data for a wide range of use cases. This week AWS announced several new Amazon S3 capabilities to give customers more ability to scale and cost optimize their storage infrastructure.
- Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering†(available today) is a new†Amazon†S3 storage class that automatically optimizes customers’ storage costs for data with unknown or changing access patterns. S3 Intelligent-Tiering is the first and only cloud storage solution to provide dynamic tiering by automatically moving data to the most cost-effective storage tier. For data with predictable access patterns, customers have used lifecycle policies to make it relatively simple to save money on data stored in Amazon S3. For customers who have data with changing access patterns, a new approach is needed. S3 Intelligent-Tiering was built using a machine learning model to train the S3 Intelligent-Tiering algorithm, using the access patterns of billions of objects across millions of buckets spanning multiple regions.†There is no management required, as customers simply load their data in and it cost optimizes, with no retrieval fees.
- Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive†(available early 2019) is a new storage class that delivers the lowest cost of any storage service at†$0.00099†per GB-month (less than one-tenth of†one cent, or†$1per TB-month). With Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive, customers who have large data sets they want to retain for a long time will be able to eliminate the cost and management of tape infrastructure while ensuring that their data is well preserved for future use and analysis. It is the ideal service for archiving data, such as medical records, media archives, and regulated financial services data.
- Amazon S3 Batch Operations†(available early 2019) is a bulk storage management and automation feature that makes it easy for customers to manage thousands, millions, or billions of objects. Customers with large data sets need a way to reliably manage objects across millions or billions of objects. With S3 Batch Operations, developers and IT administrators will now be able to change object properties and metadata and execute storage management tasks for large numbers of Amazon S3 objects with a single API request or a few clicks in the Amazon S3 Management Console. For example, Amazon S3 Batch Operations allows customers to replace object tags, change access controls, add object retention dates, copy objects from one bucket to another, and even trigger Lambda functions against existing objects stored in Amazon S3.
The Climate Corporation, a Bayer subsidiary, is dedicated to creating technologies that transform field data into meaningful insights that help farmers sustainably enhance productivity, improve efficiency, and manage their risk. “One of Climate’s most valuable services is helping farmers create seed prescriptions. We do this by providing farmers with geospatial analyses of billions of satellite tile images of their land. Climate is developing products like this all around the world, and we have data stores in Amazon S3 that are accessed by hundreds of data scientists and software developers every hour,” said†Jitendra Sharma, Head of Cloud Operations at Climate. “Many times, we will upload a data set and don’t know exactly how it will be used since our teams are working on such a wide range of products. With S3 Intelligent-Tiering, we no longer worry about committing those data sets to the most suitable Amazon S3 Storage Class. We can now collect and store data that is useful to us tomorrow or next quarter, while being efficient with our storage resources.”
Two new file system options, along with a lower-cost storage class for existing Amazon Elastic File System
This week, AWS introduced the Amazon FSx family, which includes two new fully managed third-party file system services that provide native support for Windows and compute-intensive workloads (using Lustre). AWS also introduced a new Infrequent Access storage class for Amazon Elastic File System (EFS), its fastest-growing file system service for Linux-based workloads.
- Amazon FSx for Windows File Server†(available today) provides a Windows-compatible file system with fully managed Windows file servers in the cloud. Built on Windows Server, Amazon FSx for Windows File Server provides a fully compatible Microsoft Windows File System, with full integration with customers’ Active Directory environment, including Active Directory domains, Windows access controls, and a native Windows Explorer experience. And, Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is built for the cloud, delivering the benefits of an AWS fully managed service, including automatically keeping Windows Server software up to date, detecting and correcting hardware failures, and regularly performing backups.
- Amazon FSx for Lustre†(available today) is a fully managed file system that is optimized for compute-intensive workloads, such as high-performance computing, machine learning, and media data processing workflows. Many of these applications require the high performance and low latencies of scale-out, parallel file systems. With Amazon FSx for Lustre, customers can launch and run a Lustre file system that can process very large data sets at up to hundreds of gigabytes per second of throughput, millions of IOPs, and sub-millisecond latencies.
- Amazon EFS Infrequent Access (EFS IA)†(available in early 2019) is a new storage class for Amazon EFS that is designed for files accessed less frequently, enabling customers to reduce storage costs by up to 85% compared to the Amazon EFS Standard storage class. EFS IA is ideal for any customer that has file data that is not accessed every day, but still needs the ability to access their full data set to support their business application needs without changing processes or having to manually move data between storage tiers. With EFS IA, Amazon EFS customers simply enable Lifecycle Management, and any file not accessed after 30 days gets automatically moved to the EFS IA storage class.
T. Rowe Price†is an investment management firm that provides a broad array of financial services to individuals and institutions. “We’re committed to rapidly modernizing our applications and minimizing our data center infrastructure and we are excited to see AWS’s continued commitment to Windows,” said†Mark Gogel, AVP of Core Technology Services at†T. Rowe Price. “Enhancing customer experiences through Windows applications built on AWS gives us scale and full IT cost transparency, which is not possible without moving Windows file server clusters out of our datacenters. No other cloud file storage offering provides the full Windows compatibility and performance of FSx for Windows File Server. Amazon FSx is a game changer.”
Infor is an enterprise software company that builds business applications specialized by industry and built for the cloud. “The opportunity to leverage Amazon FSx for Windows File Server allows us to simplify the amount of infrastructure we need to directly manage,” said†Greg Bell, Principal Storage Operations Administrator at Infor. “With FSx we have a managed solution that eliminates the need for us to manage the tasks associated with operating file storage, including performing backups and applying software patches. This allows us to focus on our core business – delivering great business software to our customers.”
New AWS services make it easier to transfer large data sets and securely share data
When it comes to data transfer, AWS offers customers 11 unique ways to get data into AWS, almost two times more than any other cloud storage provider. This week AWS announced two new data transfer services.
- AWS DataSync†(available today) is a data transfer service that uses network acceleration to make it easy for customers to automate moving data between on-premises storage and Amazon S3 or Amazon EFS. AWS DataSync automatically handles many of the tasks related to data transfers that can slow down migrations or burden IT operations, including running one’s own instances, handling encryption and managing scripts. AWS DataSync securely, reliably, and efficiently transfers data at speeds up to 10 times faster than open-source tools.
- AWS Transfer for SFTP†(available today) is a fully managed service that enables customers to transfer files directly into and out of Amazon S3 using the Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)—also known as Secure Shell (SSH) File Transfer Protocol. Customers that require the ability to securely exchange files, such as stock transactions, medical records, and invoices over SFTP also want to be able to move this data into Amazon S3 for durable storage and its data analytics capabilities. AWS helps customers seamlessly migrate their file transfer workflows to AWS transfer for SFTP—by integrating with existing authentication systems, and providing DNS routing with†Amazon†Route 53—so nothing changes for customers and partners, or their applications. With data in Amazon S3, customers can use it with AWS services for processing, analytics, machine learning, and archiving.
Univa is a leading innovator in enterprise-grade workload management and optimization solutions for on-premises and hybrid cloud high-performance computing. “Univa’s customers are moving towards a hybrid cloud model with AWS at a rapid pace,” said†Rob Lalonde, VP & GM, Cloud, at†Univa Corporation. “As HPC workloads dynamically migrate to AWS, the data and results need to move as well. AWS DataSync coupled with our Navops Launch automation provides for data movement to be optimized so that just the required data is migrated to the cloud, and just the results are returned. This automation minimizes unnecessary data movement and reduces the time required between the creation of an instance, the movement of the data and the execution of the workload. In HPC, time is money and AWS DataSync saves both.”
FINRA regulates a critical part of the securities industry – brokerage firms doing business with the public in†the United States. FINRA takes in up to 137 billion market events per day that are tracked, aggregated, and analyzed for the purpose of protecting investors. “As an organization, FINRA has embraced Amazon S3 as our data lake to help us eliminate storage siloes, maintain one source of data truth, and drive down our infrastructure management costs,” said†Ranganathan Rajagopal, Senior Director, Enterprise Data Platforms at FINRA. “However, managing SFTP infrastructure for over 1,000 external users doing 6 million file transfers per month was a bit of a strain. Our solution was to build our new FileX platform on AWS, and use the new AWS Transfer for SFTP service. AWS Transfer for SFTP is helping us reduce our operational burden, while maintaining critical connection to our existing authentication systems for external users – so they don’t experience any disruption as we complete our migration of SFTP services to AWS.”
