Amazon S3 – Now with Versioning!

One of best tools that we’ve been using extensively with Agility is Amazon’s Simple Storage Service.  One of the features that we get asked about often (probably because we have it built into our own custom storage tool) is the ability to store versions and to recover deleted files.

Now, Amazon has added Versioning as an out of the box feature that you can simply enable!

This means that the bucket will operate normally, but a special version number can be used to record any object’s version (deleted, overwritten, or whatever).  Also, the extra space that this takes up will count towards the storage charges, but heck, it’ll be worth it when someone accidentally deletes all of the data in the “images” folder, right?

This is just one more reason to get excited about S3!

more late – joel.

Here’s the press release:

Dear Amazon S3 Customer,

We are pleased to announce the availability of the Versioning feature for beta use across all of our Amazon S3 Regions. Versioning allows you to preserve, retrieve, and restore every version of every object in an Amazon S3 bucket. Once you enable Versioning for a bucket, Amazon S3 preserves existing objects any time you perform a PUT, POST, COPY, or DELETE operation on them. By default, GET requests will retrieve the most recently written version. Older versions of an overwritten or deleted object can be retrieved by specifying a version in the request.

Amazon S3 provides customers with a highly durable storage infrastructure. Versioning offers an additional level of protection by providing a means of recovery when customers accidentally overwrite or delete objects. This allows you to easily recover from unintended user actions and application failures. You can also use Versioning for data retention and archiving.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the public beta in our Northern California Region. As a result of your feedback, we've added an additional MFA Delete capability to Versioning. MFA Delete uses multi-factor authentication to provide an additional layer of security. If you enable Versioning with MFA Delete on your Amazon S3 bucket, two forms of authentication are required to delete a version of an object: your AWS account credentials and a valid six-digit code and serial number from an authentication device in your physical possession.

Normal Amazon S3 storage rates apply for all object versions stored. For more information, please see the Amazon S3 FAQs and Developer Guide or register for the Introduction to Versioning webinar.

Sincerely,

The Amazon S3 Team