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- S3 is an object store, not a file system. You will need to make sure that the tools you use to accomplish backup/archive are S3-savvy.
- Since S3 is not a file system, some features you might expect are missing or can be costly to replicate.
- E.g., it costs money just to get the MD5 hash or creation date for an S3 object. It's not much money, but it can add up when dealing with hundreds of thousands or millions of objects.
- S3 storage can be very cheap indeed, but you need to be careful that the tools you are using don't end up costing you a lot for S3 API operations used for checking object hashes and collecting other metadata from objects.
- There are a lot of pathways to get on-premise files to S3 or other AWS services. Picking the right one will depend on your use case, budget, ability or desire to tinker and monitor costs, and palatability of deploying additional on-premises resources (e.g., DataSync, Storage Gateway) to make things easier.
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