CODEWITHSUNDEEP
amazon-web-servicesamazon-s3amazon-ec2dns
Lars Erik Fagernaes
Lars Erik Fagernaes

Reputation: 182

One domain to mulitple s3 buckets based on geolocation

We want to host images on our application as fast as possible. As we already have an AWS setup we prefer to host our images on S3 buckets (but are open for alternatives).

The challenge is routing the request to the closest S3 bucket. Right now we use Amazon Route 53 with geolocation routing policy to the closes EC2 instance wich redirects to the respective bucket. We find this inefficent as the request goes: origin->DNS->EC2->S3 and would prefer origin->DNS->S3. Is it possible to bind two static website S3 buckets to the same domain where request are routed based on Geolocation?

Ps: We have looked into cloudfront, but since many of the images are dynamic and are only viewed once we would like the origin to be as close to the user as possible.

Upvotes: 4

Views: 1472

Answers (2)

Matt Houser
Matt Houser

Reputation: 36043

It's not possible to do this.

In order for an S3 bucket to serve files as a static website, the bucket name must match the domain that is being browsed. Due to this restriction, it's not possible to have more than one bucket serve files for the same domain because you cannot create more than one bucket with the same name, even in different regions.

CloudFront can be used to serve files from S3 buckets, and those S3 buckets don't need to have their names match the domain. So at first glance, this could be a workaround. However, CloudFront does not allow you to create more than one distribution for the same domain.

So unfortunately, as of this writing, geolocating is not possible from S3 buckets.

Edit for a deeper explanation:

Whether the DNS entry for your domain is a CNAME, an A record, or an ALIAS is irrelevant. The limitation is on the S3 side and has nothing to do with DNS.

A CNAME record will resolve example.com to s3.amazonaws.com to x.x.x.x and the connection will be made to S3. But your browser will still send example.com in the Host header.

When S3 serves files for webpages, it uses the Host header in the HTTP request to determine from which bucket the files should be served. This is because there is a single HTTP endpoint for S3. So, just like when your own web server is hosting multiple websites from the same server, it uses the Host header to determine which website you actually want.

Once S3 has the Host that you want, it compares it against the buckets available. It decided that the bucket name would be used to match against the Host header.

Upvotes: 5

Lars Erik Fagernaes
Lars Erik Fagernaes

Reputation: 182

So after a lot of research we did not find an answer to the problem. We did however update our setup. The scenario is that a user clicks a button and will view some images in an IOS app. The request when the user pushes the button is geo rerouted to the nearest EC2 instance for faster performance. Instead of returning the same imagelinks in EU and US we updated it so when clicking in US you get links to an American S3 bucket and the same for Europe. We also put up two cloud front distributions, one in front of each S3 bucket, to increase speed.

Upvotes: 1

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