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.

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.