Working with directory buckets
Directory buckets organize data hierarchically into directories as opposed to the flat storage structure of general purpose buckets. There aren't prefix limits for directory buckets, and individual directories can scale horizontally.
You can create up to 100 directory buckets in each of your Amazon Web Services accounts, with no limit on the number of objects that you can store in a bucket. Your bucket quota is applied to each Region in your Amazon Web Services account. If your application requires increasing this limit, contact Amazon Web Services Support.
Important
Directory buckets in Availability Zones that have no request activity for a period of at least 90 days
transition to an inactive state. While in an inactive state, a directory bucket is
temporarily inaccessible for reads and writes. Inactive buckets retain all storage,
object metadata, and bucket metadata. Existing storage charges apply to inactive
buckets. If you make an access request to an inactive bucket, the bucket transitions to
an active state, typically within a few minutes. During this transition period, reads
and writes return an HTTP 503 (Service Unavailable) error code. This doesn't apply to buckets in Local Zones.
There are several types of Amazon S3 buckets. Before creating a bucket, make sure that you choose the bucket type that best fits your application and performance requirements. For more information about the various bucket types and the appropriate use cases for each, see Buckets.
The following topics provide information about directory buckets. For more information about general purpose buckets, see General purpose buckets overview.
For more information about directory buckets, see the following topics.
Directory bucket names
A directory bucket name consists of a base name that you provide and a suffix that contains the ID of the Zone (Availability Zone or Local Zone) that your bucket is located in. Directory bucket names must use the following format and follow the naming rules for directory buckets:
bucket-base-name--zone-id--x-s3
For example, the following directory bucket name contains the Availability Zone ID usw2-az1:
bucket-base-name--usw2-az1--x-s3
For more information, see Directory bucket naming rules.
Directories
Directory buckets organize data hierarchically into directories as opposed to the flat sorting structure of general purpose buckets.
With a hierarchical namespace, the delimiter in the object key is important. The only
supported delimiter is a forward slash (/). Directories are determined by
delimiter boundaries. For example, the object key
dir1/dir2/file1.txt results in the directories
dir1/ and dir2/ being automatically
created, and the object file1.txt being added to the
/dir2 directory in the path
dir1/dir2/file1.txt.
The directory bucket indexing model returns unsorted results for the
ListObjectsV2 API operation. If you need to limit your results to a
subsection of your bucket, you can specify a subdirectory path in the
prefix parameter, for example, prefix=dir1/.
Key names
For directory buckets, subdirectories that are common to multiple object keys are created with the first object key. Additional object keys for the same subdirectory use the previously created subdirectory. This model gives you flexibility in choosing object keys that are best suited to the application, with equal support for sparse and dense directories.
Access management
Directory buckets have all S3 Block Public Access settings enabled by default at the bucket level. S3 Object Ownership is set to bucket owner enforced and access control lists (ACLs) are disabled. These settings can't be modified.
By default, users don't have permissions for directory buckets. To grant access permissions for directory buckets, you can use IAM to create users, groups, or roles and attach permissions to those identities. For more information, see Authorizing Regional endpoint API operations with IAM.
You can also control access to directory buckets through access points. Access points simplify managing data access at scale for shared datasets in Amazon S3. Access points are unique hostnames you create to enforce distinct permissions and network controls for all requests made through an access point. For more information, see Managing access to shared datasets in directory buckets with access points.
Directory buckets quotas
Quotas, also referred to as limits, are the maximum number of service resources or operations for your Amazon Web Services account. The following are the quotas for directory buckets. For more information on quotas in Amazon S3, see Amazon S3 quotas.
| Name | Default | Adjustable | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Directory buckets | Each Account: 100 | Yes |
The number of Amazon S3 directory buckets that you can create in an account. |
| Read TPS per directory bucket | Each directory bucket: up to 200,000 read TPS | To request a quota increase, contact Support |
The number of GET/HEAD requests per second per directory bucket. |
| Write TPS per directory bucket | Each directory bucket: up to 100,000 write TPS | To request a quota increase, contact Support |
The number of PUT/DELETE requests per second per directory bucket. |
Creating and using directory buckets
For more information about working with directory buckets, see the following topics.