In this post, we will review Amazon’s S3 storage service. S3 stands for Simple Cloud Storage Service and is one of AWS oldest services. AWS launched S3 in 2006.
S3 is designed for very high durability (S3 is designed for 99.999999999%) (11 9s) This means, in practice, you will never lose any data in S3.
It is a flexible service and it is very easy to use. Many companies that are migrating to the cloud choose this as one of their first migration points, since it is straightforward to use and cost effective.
In the next few sections, we will explore more details of the S3 service.
S3 Benefits
The AWS S3 service was one of the first services that Amazon offered on the platform. This storage service offers many advantages. Some of these include:
- Easy to scale for massive amounts of storage
- A large number of storage classes to support many different usage scenarios
- Can be easily configured to replicate data to multiple regions
- Easy to configure for data flow scenarios and archiving
- Programmatic access to support online systems and processing
Common Use Cases
Due to the flexibility and features included in S3, it can support a wide variety of use cases for storage applications. Some of these include:
- Backup and Restore
- Disaster Recovery
- Archiving
- Data lakes and big data analytics
- Hybrid cloud storage
- Cloud-native applications
- Hosting static websites
Detailed Use Case
The use case above describes a typical scenario in which S3 can interact with other services. In this scenario, a user uploads a file to a website. From there, it is stored in an S3 bucket. Once it is uploaded to S3, a Lambda function is triggered that compresses the file and tags it with metadata. When this function has completed, it sends an email notification back to the user.
S3 has a ton of features that are well beyond the scope of this post. The thing to take away from this post is that S3 is a very easy to use, flexible, and durable cloud-based storage system.
S3 Storage Classes
The following table briefly summarizes the multiple storage classes defined by S3. Each of the storages classes is designed to support different use cases and are priced accordingly.
| Storage Class | Description |
|---|---|
| S3 Standard | Designed for frequently accessed data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | Designed for automatic cost savings |
| S3 Standard-1A | For data that is less frequently accessed (rapid access) |
| S3 Standard Zone 1A | For data that is less frequently accessed (slow access) |
| S3 Glacier | Low-cost storage class for data archiving |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | S3’s lowest-cost storage class and supports long-term retention and digital preservation |
Summary
Amazon S3 is a complete cloud storage solution. It offers low cost and high performance. Multiple storage classes are available to support different use cases. APIs are available to access S3 from other services. This helps facilitate many end-to-end solutions.
Learn More
If you would like to lean more about cloud computing, check out my book and video course, Introduction to Cloud Computing. If you buy the book on Amazon you will get free access to the video class.
Introduction to Cloud Computing
