If you have a globally distributed development team, place an Amazon CloudFront distribution in front of your S3 bucket. This caches download requests closer to your developers, significantly speeding up git clone and git pull times.
docker run -d \ -p 8080:8080 \ -e AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="YOUR_IAM_ACCESS_KEY" \ -e AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="YOUR_IAM_SECRET_KEY" \ -e LFS_S3_BUCKET="company-git-lfs-storage" \ -e LFS_AWS_REGION="us-east-1" \ -e LFS_ENCRYPTION_KEY="your-secure-encryption-key" \ --name lfs-s3-bridge \ jasonwhite/rudolfs Use code with caution.
(Note: For production environments, restrict AllowedOrigins to your specific internal corporate domains or Git server IP ranges). Step 2: Create a Dedicated IAM Policy and User lfs s3 account
When you run git push , the Git LFS client authenticates with your LFS server. The server generates an Amazon S3 pre-signed URL and hands it back to the client. The client then uploads the large binary directly to your S3 account. Why Use an Amazon S3 Account for Git LFS? 1. Massive Cost Savings
if aws s3 ls s3://$BUCKET/$VERSION/md5sums.txt; then aws s3 cp s3://$BUCKET/$VERSION/md5sums.txt /tmp/ pushd $LFS_SOURCES md5sum -c /tmp/md5sums.txt --quiet popd fi If you have a globally distributed development team,
: You commit a large file (e.g., a 500MB video asset).
: Create an S3 bucket dedicated solely to your LFS objects to avoid naming conflicts with other apps. The client then uploads the large binary directly
+------------------+ +--------------------+ +---------------+ | Local Computer | (LFS API Auth) | Git LFS Server | (Pre-signed URL) | AWS S3 | | (Git LFS Client)| ----------------> | (Self-Hosted/Proxy)| -----------------> | Bucket | +------------------+ +--------------------+ +---------------+ | ^ | (Direct Upload/Download) | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
To bridge this gap, Git Large File Storage (LFS) was created. By replacing heavy binary files with lightweight text pointers inside Git, LFS keeps your repositories lean and fast. However, Git LFS requires a storage backend to host those actual binary payloads.
Security tip: Create a restricted IAM user for the LFS server—do not use your root or admin keys.
If you are a solo developer or a small team comfortable with AWS basics, setting up an S3 account for LFS is a for the cost savings alone.