Amazon S3 Storage Lens adds performance metrics, support for billions of prefixes, and export to S3 Tables
Cloud amazon, AWS, Cloud, NewsToday, we’re announcing three new capabilities for Amazon S3 Storage Lens that give you deeper insights into your storage performance and usage patterns. With the addition of performance metrics, support for analyzing billions of prefixes, and direct export to Amazon S3 Tables, you have the tools you need to optimize application performance, reduce costs, and make data-driven decisions about your Amazon S3 storage strategy.
New performance metric categories
S3 Storage Lens now includes eight new performance metric categories that help identify and resolve performance constraints across your organization. These are available at organization, account, bucket, and prefix levels. For example, the service helps you identify small objects in a bucket or prefix that can slow down application performance. This can be mitigated by batching small objects or using the Amazon S3 Express One Zone storage class for higher performance small object workloads.
To access the new performance metrics, you need to enable performance metrics in the S3 Storage Lens advanced tier when creating a new Storage Lens dashboard or editing an existing configuration.
| Metric category | Details | Use case | Mitigation |
| Read request size | Distribution of read request sizes (GET) by day | Identify dataset with small read request patterns that slow down performance | Small request: Batch small objects or use Amazon S3 Express One Zone for high-performance small object workloads |
| Write request size | Distribution of write request sizes (PUT, POST, COPY, and UploadPart) by day | Identify dataset with small write request patterns that slow down performance | Large request: Parallelize requests, use MPU or use AWS CRT |
| Storage size | Distribution of object sizes | Identify dataset with small small objects that slow down performance | Small object sizes: Consider bundling small objects |
| Concurrent PUT 503 errors | Number of 503s due to concurrent PUT operation on same object | Identify prefixes with concurrent PUT throttling that slow down performance | For single writer, modify retry behavior or use Amazon S3 Express One Zone. For multiple writers, use consensus mechanism or use Amazon S3 Express One Zone |
| Cross-Region data transfer | Bytes transferred and requests sent across Region, in Region | Identify potential performance and cost degradation due to cross-Region data access | Co-locate compute with data in the same AWS Region |
| Unique objects accessed | Number or percentage of unique objects accessed per day | Identify datasets where small subset of objects are being frequently accessed. These can be moved to higher performance storage tier for better performance | Consider moving active data to Amazon S3 Express One Zone or other caching solutions |
| FirstByteLatency (existing Amazon CloudWatch metric) | Daily average of first byte latency metric | The daily average per-request time from the complete request being received to when the response starts to be returned | |
| TotalRequestLatency (existing Amazon CloudWatch metric) | Daily average of Total Request Latency | The daily average elapsed per request time from the first byte received to the last byte sent |
How it works
On the Amazon S3 console I choose Create Storage Lens dashboard to create a new dashboard. You can also edit an existing dashboard configuration. I then configure general settings such as providing a Dashboard name, Status, and the optional Tags. Then, I choose Next.
Next, I define the scope of the dashboard by selecting Include all Regions and Include all buckets and specifying the Regions and buckets to be included.
I opt in to the Advanced tier in the Storage Lens dashboard configuration, select Performance metrics, then choose Next.
Next, I select Prefix aggregation as an additional metrics aggregation, then leave the rest of the information as default before I choose Next.
I select the Default metrics report, then General purpose bucket as the bucket type, and then select the Amazon S3 bucket in my AWS account as the Destination bucket. I leave the rest of the information as default, then select Next.
I review all the information before I choose Submit to finalize the process.
After it’s enabled, I’ll receive daily performance metrics directly in the Storage Lens console dashboard. You can also choose to export report in CSV or Parquet format to any bucket in your account or publish to Amazon CloudWatch. The performance metrics are aggregated and published daily and will be available at multiple levels: organization, account, bucket, and prefix. In this dropdown menu, I choose the % concurrent PUT 503 error for the Metric, Last 30 days for the Date range, and 10 for the Top N buckets.
The Concurrent PUT 503 error count metric tracks the number of 503 errors generated by simultaneous PUT operations to the same object. Throttling errors can degrade application performance. For a single writer, modify retry behavior or use higher performance storage tier such as Amazon S3 Express One Zone to mitigate concurrent PUT 503 errors. For multiple writers scenario, use a consensus mechanism to avoid concurrent PUT 503 errors or use higher performance storage tier such as Amazon S3 Express One Zone.
Complete analytics for all prefixes in your S3 buckets
S3 Storage Lens now supports analytics for all prefixes in your S3 buckets through a new Expanded prefixes metrics report. This capability removes previous limitations that restricted analysis to prefixes meeting a 1% size threshold and a maximum depth of 10 levels. You can now track up to billions of prefixes per bucket for analysis at the most granular prefix level, regardless of size or depth.
The Expanded prefixes metrics report includes all existing S3 Storage Lens metric categories: storage usage, activity metrics (requests and bytes transferred), data protection metrics, and detailed status code metrics.
How to get started
I follow the same steps outlined in the How it works section to create or update the Storage Lens dashboard. In Step 4 on the console, where you select export options, you can select the new Expanded prefixes metrics report. Thereafter, I can export the expanded prefixes metrics report in CSV or Parquet format to any general purpose bucket in my account for efficient querying of my Storage Lens data.
Good to know
This enhancement addresses scenarios where organizations need granular visibility across their entire prefix structure. For example, you can identify prefixes with incomplete multipart uploads to reduce costs, track compliance across your entire prefix structure for encryption and replication requirements, and detect performance issues at the most granular level.
Export S3 Storage Lens metrics to S3 Tables
S3 Storage Lens metrics can now be automatically exported to S3 Tables, a fully managed feature on AWS with built-in Apache Iceberg support. This integration provides daily automatic delivery of metrics to AWS managed S3 Tables for immediate querying without requiring additional processing infrastructure.
How to get started
I start by following the process outlined in Step 5 on the console, where I choose the export destination. This time, I choose Expanded prefixes metrics report. In addition to General purpose bucket, I choose Table bucket.
The new Storage Lens metrics are exported to new tables in an AWS managed bucket aws-s3.
I select the expanded_prefixes_activity_metrics table to view API usage metrics for expanded prefix reports.
I can preview the table on the Amazon S3 console or use Amazon Athena to query the table.
Good to know
S3 Tables integration with S3 Storage Lens simplifies metric analysis using familiar SQL tools and AWS analytics services such as Amazon Athena, Amazon QuickSight, Amazon EMR, and Amazon Redshift, without requiring a data pipeline. The metrics are automatically organized for optimal querying, with custom retention and encryption options to suit your needs.
This integration enables cross-account and cross-Region analysis, custom dashboard creation, and data correlation with other AWS services. For example, you can combine Storage Lens metrics with S3 Metadata to analyze prefix-level activity patterns and identify objects in prefixes with cold data that are eligible for transition to lower-cost storage tiers.
For your agentic AI workflows, you can use natural language to query S3 Storage Lens metrics in S3 Tables with the S3 Tables MCP Server. Agents can ask questions such as ‘which buckets grew the most last month?’ or ‘show me storage costs by storage class’ and get instant insights from your observability data.
Now available
All three enhancements are available in all AWS Regions where S3 Storage Lens is currently offered (except the China Regions and AWS GovCloud (US)).
These features are included in the Amazon S3 Storage Lens Advanced tier at no additional charge beyond standard advanced tier pricing. For the S3 Tables export, you pay only for S3 Tables storage, maintenance, and queries. There is no additional charge for the export functionality itself.
To learn more about Amazon S3 Storage Lens performance metrics, support for billions of prefixes, and export to S3 Tables, refer to the Amazon S3 user guide. For pricing details, visit the Amazon S3 pricing page.
Veliswa Boya.