Access Anywhere S3 Signatures Compatibility Advisory

Over time the way that AWS allows programs to access S3 storage has changed. In particular, the “AWS Signature” that S3 requires so it can validate access requests has evolved, with version 4 (v4) supplanting version 2 (v2) as the standard.

When Amazon makes this kind of change, they usually allow the old version of their software and the new version to coexist for some period of time before they remove the old version. That has been the case with v2 of the S3 signature, which has coexisted with v4 for several years. On June 24, however, v2 will be removed and can no longer be used.

The Access Anywhere introduced support in v10 for S3's V4 signature with the Amazon S3 storage connector. Customers using Amazon S3 storage with a pre v10 version of Access Anywhere must upgrade to a newer supported version of Access Anywhere - currently either v1808 or v1901 - prior to June 24, 2019 to ensure uninterrupted service.

Many other storage systems such as Google Cloud Storage, Cloudian and others, present an S3-compatible interface. The makers of these storage systems may choose to implement v4 signatures in the coming months. If they do then they may also retire their implementations of the v2 signature some time in the future.

The Access Anywhere added support for v4 signatures in its S3-compatible connectors in v1901. Depending on when and if these other storage systems move from v2 signatures to v4 signatures, customers using S3-compatible storage may need to upgrade to v1901 or above to maintain access to their storage. Note that, starting with v1901, Access Anywhere's S3 connectors allow the user managing the storage to choose between v2 and v4 signatures.

If you have any questions about this S3 change or upgrading your Access Anywhere, please contact us at: support@nasuni.com