How to Setup Amazon S3 Inventory to Manage Bucket Data

What Does S3 Inventory Do?

Amazon S3 Inventory is a feature in Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) that generates reports containing detailed information about the objects in your S3 buckets. It allows you to get a comprehensive view of your S3 storage, making it easier to manage large-scale data, ensure compliance, and optimize costs.

• Creates Object Metadata Reports: S3 Inventory produces detailed reports on each object in your S3 bucket. This can include object keys, sizes, last modified dates, storage classes and other relevant attributes.
• Enables Scheduled Reports: You can schedule reports to be generated on a daily or weekly basis.
• Offers Multiple Output Formats: S3 Inventory supports CSV, ORC, and Parquet formats, providing flexibility in how you consume and analyze the reports.
• Supports Compression and Encryption: Reports can be compressed using GZIP and encrypted using server-side or client-side encryption options.
• Allows Customization with Filters: You can choose which objects are included in the report by specifying prefixes or object tags.

How to Set Up S3 Inventory for Your Bucket

To set up Amazon S3 Inventory on your S3 bucket, follow these key steps to generate the AWS Inventory CSV in your specified destination bucket.

You can choose either your existing bucket or a dedicated bucket for storing inventory logs. It's common for companies to use a centralized bucket to organize inventory data for easier analysis. Before you start, ensure that your destination bucket has a policy granting the necessary permissions; otherwise, the inventory files may not be created properly.

💡Steps to configure AWS S3 inventory:

1. Navigate to the S3 bucket for which you want to create an inventory report.

2. Go to the "Management" tab, choose "Inventory," and click "Create inventory configuration."

3. Set up a name and scope by choosing the name, prefix, and depth of inventory.

4. Specify destination bucket.

🔰The destination bucket must be in the same AWS Region as the bucket for which you are setting up the inventory. The destination bucket can be in a different AWS account.

🔰Under the Destination bucket field, you see the Destination bucket permission statement that is added to the destination bucket policy to allow Amazon S3 to place data in that bucket.

5. Select report format and schedule, then click Enable the inventory report. Choose from Daily or Weekly for frequency. For output, you can choose from CSV, Apache ORC, and Apache Parquet.

6. Choose Fields including (like size, encryption, storage class, etc.), compression, and encryption options.

Once configured, the inventory report will be generated according to your schedule. After 24–48 hours, you should have an inventory report in your specified report bucket.

Important: Backup Data to Amazon S3 Easily

AOMEI Cyber Backup is a comprehensive backup solution designed to protect your data across various environments. Whether you are a small business or a large enterprise, it provides robust and scalable backup options. It supports multiple backup types, including system, disk, partition, and file backups, ensuring that your data is protected against accidental deletion, hardware failures, and other data loss scenarios.

Why Choose AOMEI Cyber Backup?

• User-Friendly Interface: AOMEI Cyber Backup features an intuitive interface that makes it easy for users of all technical levels to navigate and perform backups.
• Flexible Scheduling: You can set up automatic backups to run at specific times, ensuring that your data is always up to date without manual intervention.
• Universal Restore: Easily restore your system to a computer with different hardware and make sure you can boot your system normally after the restore.
• Compatibility with Amazon S3: Seamlessly integrates with Amazon S3, allowing you to take advantage of AWS’s robust and scalable cloud storage.
• Cost-Effective: Provides a cost-efficient solution for data backup, especially when combined with the scalable pricing of Amazon S3.

How to Backup VMware ESXi VMs to Amazon S3 Centrally

Backing up your virtual machines to Amazon S3 with AOMEI Cyber Backup is a straightforward process. Follow these steps to ensure your data is securely backed up:

1. Bind Devices: Launch AOMEI Cyber Backup web client, navigate to Source Device > VMware> + Add VMware Device to add vCenter or Standalone ESXi hosts as the source device. And then click … > Bind Device.

2. Create Backup Task: Navigate to Backup Task > + Create New Task, and then set it up according to your needs.

• Device: cover multiple VMs on the host in one backup task.
• Target: selecting to back up to a local path, or to a network path. Used paths will be saved in Favorite Storage for handy selection.
• Archive: Check "Archiving backup version to Amazon S3" and Select a S3 bucket.

• Schedule: choosing to perform full, differential or incremental backup, and automate execution daily, weekly or monthly according to the frequency you specified.

3. Start Backup: Click Start Backup and select Add the schedule and start backup now or Add the schedule only.

📢 While the Free Edition covers most of VM backup needs, you can also upgrade to enjoy advanced features:
Batch VM Backup: batch backup large numbers of VMs managed by vCenter Server or on standalone ESXi hosts.
Backup cleanup: Configure a retention policy to auto delete old backup files and save storage space.
Restore to new location: Create a new VM in the same or another datastore/host directly from the backup, saves the trouble of re-configuring the new VM.

To manage your archive tasks of VMware ESXi backups to S3 in "Backup Archive". For example, stop archiving, re-enable archiving, pause all archiving and start all archiving.

• Archive all backup versions: Start archiving from the first version of the backup task.
• Archiving from the last full backup version: The last full backup refers to the most recent complete copy of all data. Starting archiving from the last full backup means performing archiving operations based on this backup version, not starting from previous incremental or differential backup versions.
• Archiving from the next full backup version: Starting archiving from the next full backup version means that when the next full backup is performed, this version will be set as the new starting point for archiving operations.

Conclusion

S3 Inventory assists in data management, compliance, cost optimization, and data recovery. By following these steps in this article, you can set up Amazon S3 Inventory on your bucket and use the generated reports to gain valuable insights into your S3 objects.