Using S3-compatible object storage for backups gives you durable, cost-effective offsite retention — but trade off retrieval speed and per-request costs. Use it as a cold/archival layer in a tiered backup strategy, not as the primary fast-restore store.
Benefits
- High durability and geographic redundancy (cross-AZ/region).
- Cost-efficient for long-term retention vs block storage.
- Works well with retention/versioning/object-lock for compliance and ransomware protection.
- Easy automation and lifecycle rules (auto-tiering, expiry).
Drawbacks / Considerations
- Full restores (large VM images) are slower than block/file storage → RTO impact.
- Many small objects = higher request costs and lower performance.
- Bandwidth and egress (cloud) costs can be significant.
- Must manage encryption and key lifecycle (KMS or customer-managed keys).
Object storage is ideal for long-term, offsite backup & compliance, but pair it with a faster primary backup tier for acceptable RTO.
