S3 Replication Takes Center Stage in Cloud DR Strategy -- Virtualization Review

S3 Replication Takes Center Stage in Cloud DR Strategy

By David Ramel
11/18/2025

At today's Virtualization & Cloud Review summit on modernizing cloud storage strategies, AWS instructor and cloud consultant Carlos Rivas used his opening session to highlight how Amazon S3 replication has become the foundation of modern disaster recovery. Speaking to attendees focused on practical, architecture-driven approaches, he explained how same-region replication (SRR) and cross-region replication (CRR) form the backbone of resilient cloud recovery strategies.

The title is "S3 and Beyond: Modernizing Your Cloud Storage Strategy with Object Storage Summit" and is being made available for on-demand replay.

"You don't want to be doing your first disaster recovery on the day that it actually happens."

Carlos Rivas, Sr. Solutions Architect

To set the stage, Rivas began by revisiting the durability guarantees of S3, pointing out that the service is engineered for eleven nines of protection. But durability alone does not ensure recoverability. Throughout the hour, he repeatedly returned to the theme that replication is what transforms object storage from a passive data layer into an active component of an organization's resilience posture.

**[Click on image for larger view.]** (source: Rivas).

The Role of Replication in S3 Architecture
Rivas noted that S3's replication capabilities work hand in hand with versioning, security policies, and IAM controls. Replication, he argued, is where most organizations begin to see how S3 fits into disaster recovery workflows. He explained that SRR and CRR rely on versioning and apply to new objects unless batch replication is configured. This architecture forms the basis for everything from cross-account log sharing to full regional failover.

He emphasized that replication is not an isolated feature but a mechanism that supports operational continuity. As he put it, it enables teams to protect data, share it securely, improve performance for distributed workloads, and maintain compliance requirements.

Same-Region Replication for Low-Latency Protection
For many customers, Rivas said SRR is his default recommendation. He described a typical design pattern in which one availability zone runs the workload and another serves as a standby environment. In this setup, SRR ensures that objects written in the primary bucket are immediately replicated to a secondary bucket in the same region, supporting fast failover without geographic delay.

Rivas also shared a real customer case involving cross-account log sharing. The customer needed access to logs generated by an external application vendor. "We started thinking, how can we stream the logs from our application to the customer? It's their data, after all." SRR provided a straightforward answer: write logs to the primary bucket and replicate them automatically to the customer's bucket in the same region.

He explained that SRR avoids inter-region latency, which can be meaningful when meeting tight recovery time objectives. For workloads confined to a single geographic area, SRR provides a balance of performance, simplicity, and resilience.

Cross-Region Replication for Geographic Resilience
Rivas then turned to CRR and the cases where it becomes the preferred pattern. Some organizations must maintain geographically separated copies to meet compliance requirements or internal policy. Others need warm standby environments spread around the world to serve global users. And, importantly, there are scenarios where broader cloud failures come into play. As Rivas put it, "Sometimes you'll have an entire region in AWS go down." CRR ensures that up-to-date copies exist in a second region, ready to be accessed by a recovery environment.

The session also covered features that expand CRR's usefulness, including replication time control for predictable timing, multi-destination replication for distributing objects across several regions, and optional replication of delete markers to maintain dataset consistency.

Versioning as a Prerequisite
Because replication requires versioning, the session included a detailed discussion of how version control works in S3. Rivas explained that versioning protects against accidental or intentional deletion by preserving prior object states. The platform inserts a delete marker instead of overwriting the object. Teams can remove this marker to recover the last saved version.

While versioning can increase storage costs for frequently updated objects, Rivas recommended it as an essential safeguard in any disaster recovery plan.

Designing Replication into DR Workflows
Rivas stressed the importance of integrating replication into routine operational planning. Organizations should test their recovery workflows regularly, he said, because "you don't want to be doing your first disaster recovery on the day that it actually happens." He discussed IAM role requirements for cross-account replication, lifecycle policies for managing costs in replicated datasets, and scenarios where S3 Batch Operations can accelerate recovery when large numbers of objects must be restored.

He also noted that while S3 is optimized for durability and cost rather than speed, replication combined with thoughtful lifecycle management can create predictable and efficient recovery processes. Long-term data can be transitioned to Glacier tiers, while recently replicated data remains in faster-access storage classes when required for DR readiness.

The Big Picture
The session closed with a set of principles that tied the architecture together: prioritize security, optimize cost, and design for scale. Replication plays a role in all three. By combining SRR and CRR, organizations can build multi-layered resilience, protecting themselves not just against isolated application failures but also regional disruptions and compliance-driven risks.

Throughout the hour, Rivas positioned replication as a strategic tool rather than a checkbox feature, showing how organizations can use S3's built-in capabilities to strengthen their cloud disaster recovery plans without deploying additional infrastructure.

And Much More
Those are all concise summaries, of course, and you need to watch the on-demand replay to get the individual items fleshed out in detail -- along with many other actionable tips -- but this gives you the overall idea of Rivas' presentation.

And, although replays are fine -- this was just today, after all, so timeliness isn't an issue -- there are benefits of attending such summits and webcasts from Virtualization & Cloud Review and sister pubs in person. Paramount among these is the ability to ask questions of the presenters, a rare chance to get one-on-one advice from bona fide subject matter experts (not to mention the chance to win free prizes, such as the GoPro Hero 13 raffled off during this event thanks to the sponsor, 11:11 Systems).

With all that in mind, here are some upcoming summits and webcasts coming up in the next month or so from our parent company: