AWS S3

Amazon Simple Storage Service, S3, is a web service that can be used to store and retrieve arbitrary blobs of data. Data stored in S3 can include files of any kind, up to 5 terabytes in size (at the time of writing this), and also raw bytes.

Features: - Allows website hosting - Scalable - Reliable (99.9 percent) - Security - Integration - Standard interfaces (REST and SOAP) - Reduced Redundancy Storage - Torrent tracking and seeding - Share the data with a temporary URL - Logging - Versioning

Buckets

A container in Amazon S3 where the files are uploaded. For using Amazon S3 to store a file, you need to create at least one bucket. Files (objects) are stored in buckets.

Features:

  • The bucket name should be unique because it is shared by all users.
  • Buckets can contain logical nested folders and subfolders. But it cannot contain nested buckets.
  • You can create a maximum of 100 buckets in a single account.
  • The bucket name can contain letters, numbers, periods, dash, and the underscore.
  • The bucket name should start with a letter or number, and it should be between 3 to 25 characters long.
  • Buckets can be managed via the following:
  • A bucket doesn’t have any size restrictions for the user. It can store objects of any size.
  • Can be accessed via HTTP URLs as follows: - http://< NAME_OF_THE_BUCKET>.s3.amazonaws.com/< OBJECT_NAME > - http://s3.amazonaws.com/< BUCKET_NAME >/< OBJECT_NAME >

Objects

An object is a stored file in Amazon S3. Each object consists of a unique identifier, the user who uploaded the object, and permissions for other users to perform CRUD operations on it. Every object is stored in a bucket.

Objects can be managed via the following:

REST-style HTTP interface SOAP interface Objects can be downloaded via the following:

HTTP GET interface BitTorrent protocol The bucket can consist of any type of object, be it a PDF, text, video, audio, or any other kind of files. Maximum of 100 buckets in a single account.

Keys

While creating an object, a key will be assigned to the object. This key will be used for retrieving the object. The key should have the following features:

Be unique in the bucket Contain alphabets, numbers, and special characters such as-, !, _, ., *, ', (, and )

S3 vs EBS

S3 is also significantly cheaper than EBS; however, it does not offer a filesystem layer but rather a REST API. Another difference is that while EBS volumes can only be attached to a single running instance at a time, S3 objects can be shared among as many instances as we want, and depending on the desired permission policy, they can be accessed from anywhere on the Internet.