Using S3Guard for Consistent S3 Metadata

S3Guard was written to compensate for eventual consistency in Amazon S3, where directory listings lagged behind the additional update and deletion of files; newly created files may not be immediately readable, and newly deleted files still accessible. Amazon DynamoDB was used as the consistent store to allow S3A clients to share their view of the store.

Amazon S3 became consistent in November 2020. As a result, S3Guard is no longer required. Disabling S3Guard avoids S3/S3guard consistency issues where non-S3A clients changed the store without updating the dynamo DB tables, and eliminates all costs incurred when storing and accessing data in Dynamo DB.

If you are using S3Guard, we recommend you to disable it. For information about disabling S3Guard, see Disabling S3Guard and Destroying a S3Guard Database.