Question: How can I improve the transfer speeds for copying data between my S3 bucket and EC2 instance?

I want to improve the speed when transferring data from my Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance to my Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket.

Short descriptionThe transfer speeds for when you copy, move, or sync data from Amazon EC2 to Amazon S3 depend on several factors. To improve the transfer speeds between an EC2 instance and an S3 bucket, use the methods in the following resolution. ResolutionUse enhanced networking on the EC2 instanceEnhanced networking provides higher bandwidth, higher packet per second (PPS) performance, and lower latencies between instances. You can turn on enhanced networking at no additional charge.If your EC2 instance's PPS rate appears to reach its ceiling, then the instance likely reached the upper thresholds of the network interface driver. When this happens, turn on enhanced networking.Note: Be sure to review the instance requirements for enhanced networking.Use parallel workloads for the data transferTo improve the overall time that it takes to complete the data transfer, split the transfer into multiple mutually exclusive operations. For example, if you're using the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), then you can run concurrent instances of AWS S3 cp, AWS S3 mv, or AWS S3 sync. If you spread data across multiple prefixes, then run multiple instances of the AWS CLI to perform separate sync operations in parallel.For example, you can run parallel sync operations for the following different prefixes:aws s3 sync s3://source-AWSDOC-EXAMPLE-BUCKET/folder1 s3://destination-AWSDOC-EXAMPLE-BUCKET/folder1aws s3 sync s3://source-AWSDOC-EXAMPLE-BUCKET/folder2 s3://destination-AWSDOC-EXAMPLE-BUCKET/folder2Note: If you receive errors when running AWS CLI commands, make sure you confirm that you’re running a recent version of the AWS CLI .Customize the upload configurations on the AWS CLITo speed up the data transfer, customize the following AWS CLI configuration values for Amazon S3:multipart_chunksize: This value sets the size of each part that AWS CLI uploads in a multipart upload for an individual file. This setting lets you break down a larger file into smaller parts for quicker upload speeds.Note: A multipart upload requires you to upload a single file in no more than 10,000 distinct parts. Make sure that the chunk size that you set balances the part file size and the number of parts.max_concurrent_requests: By default, the AWS CLI supports multithreading. Change the max_concurrent_requests value to increase the number of requests that you can send to Amazon S3 at a time. The default value is 10. After you increase this value, you might get a stagnant response. However, combine a higher max_concurrent_requests value with parallel workloads to see better transfer speeds overall.Note: More resources are consumed on your machine when you run more threads. Make sure that your machine has enough resources to support the maximum number of concurrent requests.Use a VPC endpoint for Amazon S3If your EC2 instance is in the same AWS Region as the S3 bucket, then use a virtual private cloud (VPC) endpoint for Amazon S3. VPC endpoints can help improve overall performance and reduce the load on your network address translation (NAT).Also, you can privately connect to a VPC without an internet gateway, NAT device, or VPN connection. Instances in a VPC don't require public IP addresses to communicate with resources, such as an Amazon S3 bucket. When you use a VPC endpoint, the data traffic between the VPC and Amazon S3 is routed on the AWS network.Use S3 Transfer Acceleration between geographically distant RegionsThe data transfer speed can be higher if the EC2 instance and the S3 bucket are geographically closer to each other. If the instance and the bucket are in geographically distant Regions, then turn on Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration. Transfer Acceleration incurs additional charges, so be sure to review Amazon S3 pricing.To determine if Transfer Acceleration will improve the transfer speeds for your use case, use the Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration speed comparison tool.Upgrade your EC2 instance typeHigh EC2 instance CPU utilization can be a factor in transfer speeds. You can upgrade your instance to another instance type that provides higher memory and network performance. Larger instance sizes for an instance type typically provide better network performance than smaller instance sizes of the same type.Note: For a reliable network connection between the EC2 instances and Amazon S3, choose an instance type with at least 10 GiBps of network connectivity.Use chunked transfersIf you're transferring large files, then multipart uploads and ranged GETs can help improve overall transfer performance.

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