Efficiently Updating S3 Object Metadata Without Copying - Cost Implications

Question

Hello all,

I am currently working on optimizing the storage and management of a large number of objects in Amazon S3. Specifically, I am interested in understanding the best practices for updating object metadata without necessarily having to copy the object, particularly in scenarios involving a substantial number of large files.

From my understanding, updating metadata typically requires copying the object, which could potentially increase costs due to the additional operations. Here are my questions:

* Is there a way to update metadata of S3 objects without having to copy the object?
* If copying is unavoidable, what are the cost implications of this operation, especially when dealing with large volumes of data?
* Are there any strategies or tools that can help minimize these costs while managing metadata updates effectively?

I appreciate any insights or experiences you can share, including any relevant AWS documentation or practices.

Thank you!

Max Clements · Accepted Answer

[S3 Object Metadata is immutable](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/UsingMetadata.html), so you cannot update the meta-data without calling a copy operation. The copy happens inside of S3 however, so you are not billed for data, however, if your bucket has versioning turned on, a new version will be saved, which could increase storage costs.

As for operation costs, you obviously need to interact with S3 with an API call, so even if their was a way to change meta-data without the copy operation, you would still need to make an API call, so I don't think the copy-call is really a problem, if you need to mutate something in S3 you need to make an API call.

Riku_Kobayashi · Answer

Hello.

> Is there a way to update metadata of S3 objects without having to copy the object?

As you may know, you need to run "copy-object" to modify an object's metadata using the AWS CLI or SDK.

> If copying is unavoidable, what are the cost implications of this operation, especially when dealing with large volumes of data?

S3 incurs fees for API requests, so costs will increase if there are a large number of objects whose metadata you want to change.  
https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/?nc1=h_ls

> Are there any strategies or tools that can help minimize these costs while managing metadata updates effectively?

As far as I know, I don't think there is any other way to do it other than AWS CLI or SDK.

Efficiently Updating S3 Object Metadata Without Copying - Cost Implications

Relevant content