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Aaron Rose
Aaron Rose

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Data Silos: Why Teams Keep Drowning in Their Own Information

#aws #s3 #devops #bash

From One to Three: How S3 Buckets Multiplying Sank a Team’s Productivity

Problem

Friday night, five minutes before sign-off. A support rep gets a call from a customer asking for a copy of an invoice from two years ago. Easy, right? They open the S3 bucket they’ve been using—nothing there. Finance swears it’s in their bucket. Engineering says, no, they’ve got the “real” archive. Three buckets, three partial answers, and the clock is ticking.

This isn’t about storage capacity. It’s about silos. Instead of one source of truth, the team has three fragmented ones:

  • Duplicate data: multiple versions of the same file.
  • Inconsistent schemas: metadata tags don’t line up.
  • Lost accountability: no one knows which copy is authoritative.

The system didn’t fail—process did.

Why It Matters

Data silos cost time, money, and trust. Customers don’t care if Finance or Support “owns” the right file—they just want accurate answers. Without consolidation:

  • Audit requests are delayed.
  • Engineers waste hours reconciling duplicates.
  • Leaders lose confidence in their own data, hindering strategic decisions.

The net effect: slower response times and missed opportunities.

Key Terms

  • S3 Bucket: An Amazon Simple Storage Service container for files and objects.
  • Source of Truth: The single, authoritative version of a dataset.
  • Cross-Region Replication (CRR): AWS feature that copies data across regions for consistency and backup.

Steps at a Glance

  1. Inventory existing S3 buckets.
  2. Define one source-of-truth bucket.
  3. Consolidate and migrate files.
  4. Enforce access policies.
  5. Set up monitoring and replication.

Detailed Steps

1. Inventory Existing Buckets

aws s3 ls
aws s3api list-buckets \
    --query "Buckets[].Name"
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Identify which buckets contain overlapping datasets.

2. Define a Source of Truth
Pick one bucket (e.g., s3://company-customer-data) and declare it official in documentation.

3. Consolidate and Migrate Files
Before running sync commands, back up your data to avoid accidental overwrites.

aws s3 sync s3://legacy-finance-data s3://company-customer-data
aws s3 sync s3://legacy-support-data s3://company-customer-data
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Resolve duplicates by metadata, timestamps, or business rules.

4. Enforce Access Policies

aws s3api put-bucket-policy \
    --bucket company-customer-data \
    --policy file://bucket-policy.json
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Restrict creation of new silos by limiting who can make buckets.

5. Set Up Monitoring and Replication
Enable versioning, logging, and optional CRR:

aws s3api put-bucket-versioning \
    --bucket company-customer-data \
    --versioning-configuration Status=Enabled
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Conclusion

S3 isn’t the villain—data silos are. Buckets multiplied because each team solved their problem in isolation. The fix wasn’t more storage; it was alignment: one source of truth, clear policies, and proactive monitoring. Eliminate the silos, and suddenly the data flows again—saving the next support rep from another Friday night scramble.

Aaron Rose is a software engineer and technology writer at tech-reader.blog and the author of Think Like a Genius.

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