How can I design a file storage system by using Amazon S3?

14    Asked by DavidWHITE in Devops , Asked on Jul 1, 2024

 I am currently engaged with tasking a scalable storage solution designed for a new mobile application which would allow users to upload and download images. The app is expected to grow rapidly, with potentially millions of users and a large volume of images uploaded daily. How can I design the file storage system by using the Amazon S3 to ensure scalability, reliability, and cost efficiency for handling user-uploaded images in this mobile application? 

Answered by Diya tomar

In the context of DevOps, here are the steps given of how you can architect the file storage system by using the Amazon S3 for the scenario that you have described:

Bucket organization

You can create an S3 Bucket to store all the uploaded images. You can consider organizing the bucket structure based on the IDs of the users or any other logical partitioning schemes to manage scalability and access control effectively.

Access the control

You can now implement IAM roles and policies to control access to the S3 bucket. You should try to ensure that the users can only access their own uploaded images.

Image uploading

You can use the AWS SDKs to facilitate image upload from the mobile application directory to the S3 files. You can also generate ore-signed URLs for securely uploading the images directly from the client side to S3 which would help you in reducing the load on your backend servers.

Image downloading

You can serve your images directly from the S3 to the mobile application through public URLs or by using authenticated requests.

Monitoring band scalability

You can set up Amazon Cloudwatch for monitoring S3 access patterns, storage usage, and also performance metrics. You can use the S3 transfer acceleration for faster upload from various locations worldwide.

Cost optimization

You can use the S3 lifecycle policies for transitioning infrequently accessed images to cheaper storage classes such as S3 Glacier for optimizing costs while maintaining data availability.

Here is a combined Python-based script given which would demonstrate the above steps' coding structure:

Import boto3
# Initialize S3 client
S3_client = boto3.client(‘s3’)
# Function to generate pre-signed URL for uploading images
Def generate_upload_url(bucket_name, object_name):
    url = s3_client.generate_presigned_url(
        ClientMethod=’put_object’,
        Params={‘Bucket’: bucket_name, ‘Key’: object_name},
        ExpiresIn=3600 # URL expiration time in seconds
    )
    Return url
# Function to generate pre-signed URL for downloading images
Def generate_download_url(bucket_name, object_key):
    url = s3_client.generate_presigned_url(
        ClientMethod=’get_object’,
        Params={‘Bucket’: bucket_name, ‘Key’: object_key},
        ExpiresIn=3600 # URL expiration time in seconds
    )
    Return url
# Function to set S3 lifecycle policy to transition objects to Glacier after 30 days
Def set_lifecycle_policy(bucket_name):
    Lifecycle_configuration = {
        ‘Rules’: [
            {
                ‘ID’: ‘Move images to Glacier’,
                ‘Filter’: {‘Prefix’: ‘’},
                ‘Status’: ‘Enabled’,
                ‘Transitions’: [
                    {
                        ‘Days’: 30,
                        ‘StorageClass’: ‘GLACIER’
                    }
                ]
            }
        ]
    }
    S3_client.put_bucket_lifecycle_configuration(
        Bucket=bucket_name,
        LifecycleConfiguration=lifecycle_configuration
    )
# Example usage:
If __name__ == “__main__”:
    Bucket_name = ‘your-app-images-bucket’
    Object_key = ‘user1/image1.jpg’
    # Generate pre-signed URL for uploading
    Upload_url = generate_upload_url(bucket_name, object_key)
    Print(f”Upload URL: {upload_url}”)
    # Generate pre-signed URL for downloading
    Download_url = generate_download_url(bucket_name, object_key)
    Print(f”Download URL: {download_url}”)
    # Set lifecycle policy to transition objects to Glacier
    Set_lifecycle_policy(bucket_name)
    Print(f”Lifecycle policy set for bucket: {bucket_name}”)

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