AWS Lake Formation
Build, secure, and manage data lakes in days.
Overview
AWS Lake Formation is a service that helps you build, secure, and manage data lakes. While not a full-fledged data mesh platform, it provides key capabilities for implementing a data mesh on AWS. It allows you to define and enforce fine-grained access control policies for data in Amazon S3 and the AWS Glue Data Catalog. This enables a central platform team to manage security while allowing domain teams to own and manage their data products within the data lake.
✨ Key Features
- Centralized Data Catalog (AWS Glue)
- Fine-grained access control (table, column, row-level)
- Governed Tables with ACID transactions
- Cross-account data sharing
- Auditing and monitoring
🎯 Key Differentiators
- Native, deep integration with the AWS analytics ecosystem
- Simplifies setting up a secure data lake on AWS
- No additional cost for the service itself
Unique Value: Provides the federated computational governance plane for a data mesh on AWS, enabling centralized security policy management while allowing decentralized data ownership.
🎯 Use Cases (4)
✅ Best For
- Using cross-account permissions to share specific tables between business domains
- Applying column-level security to sensitive data products
💡 Check With Vendor
Verify these considerations match your specific requirements:
- Multi-cloud data governance
- Business glossary and advanced collaboration features (requires other tools)
🏆 Alternatives
Offers a more native and cost-effective solution for AWS-centric organizations compared to third-party data governance platforms.
💻 Platforms
🔌 Integrations
🛟 Support Options
- ✓ Email Support
- ✓ Live Chat
- ✓ Phone Support
- ✓ Dedicated Support (AWS Support Plans tier)
🔒 Compliance & Security
💰 Pricing
Free tier: No additional charge for Lake Formation itself. You pay for the underlying AWS services used (e.g., S3, Glue, Athena).
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