2.3.1. Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
š” First Principle: Amazon S3 provides highly durable, scalable, and cost-effective object storage, enabling users to store and retrieve vast amounts of data over the internet for any use case.
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is an object storage service that offers industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance. It's designed to store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere on the web.
Key Characteristics of Amazon S3:
- Object Storage: Data is stored as "objects" within "buckets." An object is a file (e.g., image, video, document) and its metadata.
- Buckets: Containers for objects. Global unique names, act like top-level folders.
- Highly Durable: Designed for 99.999999999% (11 nines) of durability, meaning data is stored redundantly across multiple devices and Availability Zones.
- Scalable: Virtually unlimited storage capacity.
- Cost-Effective: Pay-as-you-go pricing, with various storage classes optimized for different access patterns and costs (e.g., Standard, Infrequent Access, Glacier).
- Accessibility: Accessible via HTTP/S (web interface, AWS CLI, AWS SDKs).
- Use Cases: Static website hosting, backups, data lakes, archival, content distribution, storing application assets (images, videos).
Scenario: A company needs to host a static website, store large volumes of customer photos, and use it as a destination for application backups. They need a highly durable and scalable storage solution.
Reflection Question: How does Amazon S3, as a highly durable, scalable, and cost-effective object storage service, fundamentally allow businesses to store and retrieve vast amounts of diverse data (e.g., website files, backups) over the internet for various use cases?