Global Accelerator and S3

[trevor-roberts-jr]

Please revise the choices for the SA Pro practice question below that involves S3, CloudFront, and Global Accelerator. Typically, any kind of global access performance concerns for S3 objects are resolved by setting the S3 bucket as a CloudFront distribution origin. However, one of the correct answers includes using a Global Accelerator endpoint with an S3 bucket and then configuring that endpoint as a CloudFront distribution origin. I do not recall ever seeing Global Accelerator and CloudFront used simultaneously for the same resource, and I couldn’t find any AWS documentation for such a configuration.

The only reference that I found that involves Global Accelerator and S3 is in the FAQ that mentions to use a Multi-Region Access Point in front of buckets from multiple regions to provide a single endpoint for users to access: https://aws.amazon.com/global-accelerator/faqs/#:~:text=A%3A%20You%20can%20use%20Amazon,buckets%20in%20different%20AWS%20Regions.

Here is the question:

A company hosts a web application service in the AWS eu-west-1 region. The application serves high-resolution weather maps to users. The maps are updated frequently which are stored in an Amazon S3 bucket along with the static web contents. The web application is behind an Amazon CloudFront distribution. The company has expanded and now provides the same service to North American users. The new users report that their viewing experience with the weather maps is inconsistent and slow at times.

Which of the following steps can be implemented to provide consistent performance to the users in a cost-effective way? (Select TWO.)

• [ ] Create a new AWS Global Accelerator endpoint for the eu-west-1 S3 bucket. Configure additional endpoint groups in the us-east-1 S3 bucket for TCP ports 80 and 443.
• [ ] <s>Create a Lambda@Edge that modifies requests from North American users to use the us-east-1 Amazon S3 bucket endpoint as the new origin.</s>
• [ ] Create a new AWS Global Accelerator endpoint for the us-east-1 bucket and add it as an origin for the CloudFront distribution. Use Lamda@Edge to modify North American requests to use this new origin.
• [ ] Create a Lamda@Edge function that modifies requests from North American users to use the S3 Transfer Acceleration endpoint for the us-east-1 region.
• [ ] Configure Amazon S3 cross-region replication from the eu-west-1 bucket to a new bucket in the us-east-1 region.

Incorrect

AWS Global Accelerator is a service in which you create accelerators to improve the performance of your applications for local and global users. Depending on the type of accelerator you choose, you can gain additional benefits.

• By using a standard accelerator, you can improve availability of your internet applications that are used by a global audience. With a standard accelerator, Global Accelerator directs traffic over the AWS global network to endpoints in the nearest Region to the client.
• By using a custom routing accelerator, you can map one or more users to a specific destination among many destinations.

The static IP addresses provided by AWS Global Accelerator serve as single fixed entry points for your clients. When you set up your accelerator with Global Accelerator, you associate the static IP addresses to regional endpoints in one or more AWS Regions.

Amazon S3 Replication enables automatic, asynchronous copying of objects across Amazon S3 buckets. Buckets that are configured for object replication can be owned by the same AWS account or by different accounts. Objects may be replicated to a single destination bucket or multiple destination buckets. Destination buckets can be in different AWS Regions or within the same Region as the source bucket.

S3 Cross-Region Replication (CRR) is used to copy objects across Amazon S3 buckets in different AWS Regions. CRR can help you do the following:

• Meet compliance requirements — Although Amazon S3 stores your data across multiple geographically distant Availability Zones by default, compliance requirements might dictate that you store data at even greater distances.
• Minimize latency — If your customers are in two geographic locations, you can minimize latency in accessing objects by maintaining object copies in AWS Regions that are geographically closer to your users.
• Increase operational efficiency — If you have compute clusters in two different AWS Regions that analyze the same set of objects, you might choose to maintain object copies in those Regions.

!https://media.tutorialsdojo.com/sap_global_accelarator.png

The option that says: Create a new Global Accelerator endpoint for the us-east-1 bucket and add it as an origin for the CloudFront distribution. Use Lamda@Edge to modify North American requests to use this new origin is correct. A Global Accelerator endpoint uses edge locations near the users. Redirecting NA users to this origin can significantly provide a consistent network experience when using the web app.

The option that says: Configure Amazon S3 cross-region replication from the eu-west-1 bucket to a new bucket in the us-east-1 region is correct. You can replicate the objects from the eu-west-1 region to the us-east-1 region to have a closer origin to the NA users.

The option that says: Create a Lambda@Edge that modifies requests from North American users to use the us-east-1 Amazon S3 bucket endpoint as the new origin is incorrect. Although this is possible, the NA users may still experience inconsistent network performance, such as higher latency or slower network in accessing the us-east-1 S3 bucket depending on the user location in the NA region.

The option that says: Create a new Global Accelerator endpoint for the eu-west-1 S3 bucket. Configure additional endpoint groups in the us-east-1 S3 bucket for TCP ports 80 and 443 is incorrect. It is possible to improve performance by creating a Global Accelerator endpoint for the eu-west-1 bucket. However, it is better to create an endpoint pointing directly to the us-east-1 S3 bucket for the NA users.

The option that says: Create a Lamda@Edge function that modifies requests from North American users to use the S3 Transfer Acceleration endpoint for the us-east-1 region is incorrect. This option is possible because S3 Transfer Acceleration can accelerate long-distance transfers to and from your Amazon S3 buckets. However, it can incur more cost due to usage on the S3 acceleration endpoint and big data transfers.

References:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/global-accelerator/latest/dg/what-is-global-accelerator.html

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/global-accelerator/latest/dg/introduction-how-it-works.html

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/replication.html

Check out this Amazon S3 Cheat Sheet:

https://tutorialsdojo.com/amazon-s3/

Check out this AWS Global Accelerator vs Amazon CloudFront comparison:

https://tutorialsdojo.com/aws-global-accelerator-vs-amazon-cloudfront/

[Benny25]

Same issue here, I never heard about this, and I can not see how it would bring any value. Can we have someone double checking it or explaining it to us please?