AWS Storage Services

Introduction

Amazon offers several storage services, each optimized for specific use cases. In order to choose the best storage for your application, first we must understand the various offerings.

In this article we will briefly discuss Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Elastic Block Store (EBS) and Elastic File Store (EFS). We will cover optimal use cases for each service and show how to integrate Amazon storage with your on-premise solutions.

S3 basics and terminology

Amazon S3 is a highly durable and highly available object storage service. As object-based storage, there is no need to provision a specific amount of space to store your data on, like a standard hard drive (block storage). You may upload any amount of data to S3 without worrying about running out of storage, and you will only be charged for the data you are currently using.

In order to upload data to S3, you must first create “buckets” in a specific AWS region. A bucket is a container for your data or objects. Access to each bucket can be controlled using an S3 bucket policy or IAM policy. By default, S3 buckets are private (only the AWS account that created the bucket can access the bucket). 

One thing to note: bucket names are globally unique across all AWS accounts. This means that only one bucket named “Files” or “Backups” may exist across ALL AWS accounts. You will not be able to create a bucket with the same name as any other bucket used by any other account.

Sponsorships Available

Sponsorships Available

Sponsorships Available

Data stored in S3 is known as an object, a key-value pair. A key is the name of the file, while the value is the specific data you are storing. Each object stored in an S3 bucket may be up to 5 TB in size.

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