Amazon S3 Object Storage
Amazon S3, or Amazon Simple Storage Service, is a service offered by Amazon Web Services that provides object storage on a massively scalable cloud-based infrastructure. S3 is designed for 99.999999999 percent durability with high availability and is available at a low cost..
An Object in S3 consists of binary data, the contents of a file, and a key which is the name of the file and its location. Objects are stored in Buckets, which can be provisioned to take advantage of a wide range of features, such as default encryption at rest and object versioning.
Benefits of Amazon Web Services S3
There are many compelling reasons to utilize Amazon S3 for storing objects referenced from your FileMaker application, including:
- Reduction in database file size
- External container data
- Quicker response time to load images
- Cost reduction over traditional volume drive space
- 11 nines of durability (99.999999999 percent)
Reducing the overhead of resources on a database server to serve binary data can increase overall performance. Your application can provide a secure link to files stored in S3 and reduce network latency by referencing directly from S3 instead of piping through your database and application.
SideCar for AWS S3
Fortunately, we have developed our SideCar for S3 with all this in mind. SideCar is a highly available microservice built with well supported SDK that allows for secure integration between your custom-built application and Amazon S3.
Options extend beyond simply uploading a file. For example, there are endpoints for listing objects in a bucket, making it possible to sync up with other applications using the same Bucket as a repository. By limiting the scope of items returned by a query, you can easily populate data in your application with what exists in S3 without having to keep a record of everything yourself.
Our sample file demonstrates options for uploading objects, including uploading directly from a Container type field in FileMaker and a web viewer where files can be uploaded directly without ever needing to be stored locally or on a server. The resulting uploaded objects can then be referenced with records in a database and compared with an MD5 string to ensure that the object was successfully transferred. There are plenty of options that can be custom fit to your exact needs.
The high availability of serverless infrastructure makes integrating with your applications quick and easy by eliminating the complexities of integration down to a simple API call that handles all the heavy lifting. We have an easy-to-follow example file built in FileMaker that can be used on its own or integrated into your custom development.
Leveraging Amazon S3 for storage, the Soliant.cloud® Amazon Web Services S3 SideCar enables businesses to improve how their FileMaker application manages container objects.
Snow
Consider, for example, transferring a large amount of data at once using one of the Snow family of devices, like a Snow Cone offered by AWS. One of our clients did this to reduce the time and bandwidth required to perform a cloud migration for their locally stored objects. A secure device is shipped to your location, where objects can be copied locally without incurring data transfer charges. Once done, the device is shipped back to AWS and copied to your provisioned Bucket. Once in S3, those objects can be listed and retrieved by your application as needed.