I'm working with an S3 bucket where I store user data as individual files named by user IDs, which are just numbers like '11203242334'. Now, I need to implement a new format for the files that starts with 'M_' followed by the user ID. For example, the file name would become 'M_11203242334'. While reading an article about Amazon S3 performance, I came across the concept of using prefixes to organize objects. Given that I currently have all these files in a single bucket at the same level, is the 'M_' part of my file names considered a prefix? Will it create any performance benefits or separate partitions?
2 Answers
From what I've read, having a prefix like 'M_' probably won't make much difference for performance anymore. In the past, it was recommended to have more varied keys to improve distribution, but things have changed. If your keys are already well-distributed and fit efficiently in the lookup process, it's not as critical.
Exactly! It may not seem important for daily uses, but for those big scale actions, having a bit of variety can help, especially if you have to deal with hundreds or thousands of files.
It's interesting because S3 is technically flat. Those 'folders' you see are just a way to view multiple prefixes. Everything is stored with unique keys, and you can include slashes in those keys to create the appearance of a directory structure.
Totally true! The UI does a nice job of representing that, but at the end of the day, it's all about those key values. You could have a key like 'mydata/2023/user1' and it would work just the same.
Right! And even though performance may not be significantly impacted, it's still a good practice to organize your files if you're managing a lot of them. It helps with bulk operations like deleting files later on.