Skip to content

Add warning about S3 outages affecting form downloads #2088

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Open
gaurav-goswamii wants to merge 4 commits into
base: master
Choose a base branch
from
Open

Add warning about S3 outages affecting form downloads #2088

Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
4 commits
Select commit Hold shift + click to select a range
c07f7e8
reducing repetition of 'things' to improve awkward sentence flow
gaurav-goswamii Aug 9, 2026
435b5af
docs: warning about s3 outage affecting downloads
gaurav-goswamii Aug 14, 2026
ce9f59d
docs: warning about s3 outage affecting downloads
gaurav-goswamii Aug 14, 2026
861bc88
docs: revise s3 outage warning
gaurav-goswamii Aug 15, 2026
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
6 changes: 5 additions & 1 deletion docs/central-install-digital-ocean.rst
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -532,7 +532,11 @@ Creating and using a custom PostgreSQL database server
Using S3-compatible Storage
---------------------------

By default, Central stores form and submission attachments in its main database, but it can be configured to move these to an external object store. If you already have or plan to collect many files, storing them outside the main database can reduce database load and cost. It can also make it more practical to backup and restore the database.
By default, Central stores form and submission attachments in its main database, but it can be configured to move these to an external object store.

- If S3-compatible storage goes down, Central will still accept submissions, but devices may not receive updates to forms with attachments, and integrations or dashboards that use attachments may fail.

@lognaturel lognaturel Sep 10, 2026

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Member

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

I would probably tend to add this bullet point to the consideration list below. Another alternative would be to style it here as a warning.

- If you opt into S3-compatible storage, you must design a backup and restore strategy for that storage.

@lognaturel lognaturel Sep 10, 2026

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Member

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

This is already in the consideration list below. I think it works well where it is.

If you already have or plan to collect many files, storing them outside the main database can reduce database load and cost. It can also make it more practical to backup and restore the database.

@lognaturel lognaturel Sep 10, 2026

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Member

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

This explains why someone might want to opt into the functionality, it feels like it should be at the top as it was before.


Consider the following to help you decide whether S3-compatible storage is a good fit:

Expand Down