Learn DevOps

What’s the difference between cross-region replication and multi-region access points?

Hải Yến Trịnh's photo
Hải Yến Trịnh
·

3 min read

If I have bucket in 1 region. For e.g. Tokyo: 1. Will I lose access to my S3 bucket if the Tokyo region is affected? 2. If I can’t access it, can I use cross-region replication? 3. And what’s the relationship and difference between cross-region replication and multi-region access points?

Answer from AWS:

Hi Team,

Thank you for contacting AWS Premium Support. My name is Colin and I will be working on this case.

I understand that you have a few question regarding cross region replication and multi region access points. Please correct me if I am wrong.

I will answer your questions sequentially:

  1. Will I lose access to my S3 bucket if the Tokyo region is affected?

  • Each AWS Region consists of multiple, isolated, and physically separate AZs within a geographic area. AZs are physically separated by a meaningful distance, many kilometers, from any other AZ, although all are within 100 km (60 miles) of each other. Hence with AZs, companies are better isolated and protected from issues such as power outages, lightning strikes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and more. [1]

  • Amazon S3 Standard is designed to provide 99.999999999% (11 9’s) of data durability of objects over a given year. This durability level corresponds to an average annual expected loss of 0.000000001% of objects. [2]

  • It redundantly stores your objects on multiple devices across a minimum of three Availability Zones (AZs) in an Amazon S3 Region before returning SUCCESS.

  1. If I can’t access it, can I use cross-region replication?
  • As with any environment, the best practice is to have a backup and to put in place safeguards against malicious or accidental deletion. For S3 data, that best practice includes secure access permissions, Cross-Region Replication, versioning, and a functioning, regularly tested backup. [2]
  1. And what’s the relationship and difference between cross-region replication and multi-region access points?

  • Amazon S3 Multi-Region Access Points provide a global endpoint that applications can use to fulfil requests from S3 buckets located in multiple AWS Regions. [3]

  • S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) is used to copy objects across Amazon S3 buckets in different AWS Regions. [4]

  • When you create a Multi-Region Access Point, you specify a set of Regions where you want to store data to be served through that Multi-Region Access Point. You can use S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) to synchronise data among buckets in those Regions.

I hope you find the above information useful. Feel free to get back to us if you have further questions or concerns regarding this. I will be more than happy to assist you further.

Have a great day ahead!

References
[1] – https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/regions_az/
[2] – https://aws.amazon.com/s3/faqs/
[3] – https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/MultiRegionAccessPoints.html
[4] – https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/replication.html#crr-scenario

We value your feedback. Please share your experience by rating this correspondence using the AWS Support Center link at the end of this correspondence. Each correspondence can also be rated by selecting the stars in top right corner of each correspondence within the AWS Support Center.

Best regards,
Colin C.
Amazon Web Services

AWS