Storage Lens

🔍 What is S3 Storage Lens?

S3 Storage Lens is an analytics dashboard built into AWS that gives you organization-wide visibility into your S3 usage and activity.

It helps you analyze storage trends, identify cost optimization opportunities, and improve data protection practices.

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🧠 Why Use S3 Storage Lens?

Benefit	Description
🔎 Storage insights	Track number of objects, size, versions, and growth
💰 Cost optimization	Identify infrequent access objects or non-current versions
🛡 Data protection	Find buckets without encryption, versioning, MFA delete
👥 Organization-wide visibility	View all buckets in all accounts via AWS Organizations
📊 Export metrics	Export to S3 in CSV or Parquet for detailed analysis

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📈 What Metrics Does It Show?

Category	Key Metrics Example
Storage	Total storage, object count, avg object size
Cost efficiency	Current version bytes, noncurrent version bytes
Data protection	% buckets with encryption, versioning, MFA delete
Activity	PUT, GET, DELETE request counts (Advanced tier)
Replication status	Replicated bytes and failed replications

🚨 Advanced metrics (including request activity) are paid.

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🗂 Storage Lens Structure

Term	Description
Dashboard	The UI-based view with visual charts
Configuration	The rules defining which buckets to monitor
Scope	AWS account, AWS Organization, or region
Metrics Export	Optional export of raw data to S3

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🔧 How to Enable Storage Lens (Console)

1. Go to S3 → Storage Lens

2. Click Create dashboard

3. Define:

   • Dashboard name

   • Scope: All buckets, or filtered (prefix/account)

   • Enable metrics export (optional)

   • Choose Advanced metrics (optional)

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📂 Use Cases

Goal	How Storage Lens Helps
Reduce S3 cost	Find old/stale/noncurrent data
Ensure security	Detect unencrypted or unversioned buckets
Monitor growth	View weekly/monthly usage trends
Audit replication	Track objects that failed to replicate
Optimize storage class usage	Spot frequently accessed objects in Glacier

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📄 Sample Output Metrics (CSV Export)

Date	Bucket	TotalBytes	ObjectCount	NoncurrentBytes	Encrypted?
2025-06-14	yuva-prod-logs	5000000000	240000	70000000	Yes
2025-06-14	yuva-temp-assets	200000000	3000	0	No

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🛠️ Terraform Example – Enable S3 Storage Lens

resource "aws_s3control_storage_lens_configuration" "lens" {
  config_id = "yuva-storage-lens"

  storage_lens_configuration {
    enabled = true
    id      = "yuva-storage-lens"

    account_level {
      activity_metrics {
        is_enabled = true
      }
      bucket_level {
        activity_metrics {
          is_enabled = true
        }
        prefix_level {
          storage_metrics {
            is_enabled = true
          }
        }
      }
    }

    data_export {
      cloud_watch_metrics {
        is_enabled = true
      }
      s3_bucket_destination {
        account_id = "123456789012"
        arn        = "arn:aws:s3:::yuva-storage-lens-reports"
        format     = "CSV"
        output_schema_version = "V_1"
        prefix     = "lens-reports/"
      }
    }

    aws_org {
      arn = "arn:aws:organizations::123456789012:organization/o-exampleorgid"
    }
  }
}

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💰 Pricing

Feature	Cost
Basic metrics	✅ Free
Advanced metrics	$0.20 per million objects/month
CloudWatch metrics export	Standard CloudWatch pricing applies
CSV export to S3	Standard S3 PUT/GET charges apply

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✅ TL;DR Summary

Feature	Value
What is it?	Org-wide dashboard for S3 usage analytics
Free version?	Yes, with basic metrics only
Use cases	Cost reduction, governance, compliance
Export options	CSV to S3, or CloudWatch dashboard
Terraform support	Yes, via aws_s3control_storage_lens_configuration