S3 (Simple Storage Service)
💡 Definition
Amazon S3 is an object storage service that offers industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance. It stores data as objects within buckets.
🔑 Key Concepts
- Bucket: A container for objects (must have a globally unique name).
- Object: A file and any metadata that describes that file.
- Key: The unique identifier for an object within a bucket.
- Region: You choose the AWS Region where Amazon S3 stores the buckets.
- Storage Classes: Different tiers for different access patterns (e.g., S3 Standard, S3 Standard-IA, S3 Glacier).
⚙️ How it Works
- Create a Bucket: Specify a Region and unique name.
- Upload Objects: Upload files (photos, videos, documents).
- Set Permissions: Use Bucket Policies or IAM policies to control access.
- Manage Lifecycle: Automate moving objects to cheaper storage classes (e.g., to Glacier) after a set time.
🎯 Use Cases
- Backup and Restore: Durable storage for critical data.
- Static Website Hosting: Host HTML/CSS/JS files directly from a bucket.
- Data Lakes: Repository for big data analytics.
- Archive: Long-term retention using S3 Glacier.
💰 Pricing Model
- Storage: Pay for GBs stored per month.
- Requests: Pay for PUT, COPY, POST, LIST, and GET requests.
- Data Transfer: Pay for data transferred OUT of S3 (Data IN is usually free).
- Management: Fees for storage class analysis or object tagging.
📝 Exam Tips (CLF-C02)
- S3 is Object Storage (not Block storage like EBS).
- 99.999999999% (11 9s) Durability: Highly unlikely to lose data.
- Buckets are Region-specific but names must be Globally Unique.
- Versioning: Must be enabled to protect against accidental deletion/overwrite.
- Amazon S3 is an AWS service that provides scalable, durable, and cost-effective object storage in the cloud. Amazon S3 can store any amount and type of data, such as server logs, and offers multiple storage classes with different performance and price characteristics.