Amazon Simple Storage Service(S3)

By Jayant Sharma

Introduction

Amazon Simple Storage Service is storage for the Internet. Amazon S3 has a simple web services interface that you can use to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It is designed for online backup and archiving of data and applications using AWS.

Working of AWS S3

Amazon S3 is an object storage service, which differs from block storage. Each object is stored as a file with its metadata included and is given an ID number. Applications use this ID number to access an object. Unlike file and block cloud storage, a developer can access an object via API's like Rest API

The S3 service gives a subscriber, access to the same systems that Amazon uses to run its own websites. S3 enables customers to upload, store and download practically any file or object that is up to 5 TB in size, with the largest single upload capped at 5 GB. 

Amazon S3 storage classes

Amazon S3 comes in three storage classes: 

• S3 Standard, 

• S3 Infrequent Access  

• Amazon Glacier

S3 Standard is suitable for frequently accessed data that needs to be delivered with low latency and high throughput. S3 Standard targets applications, dynamic websites, content distribution and big data workloads. 

S3 Infrequent Access offers a lower storage price for data that must be quickly accessible. This tier can be used for backups, disaster recovery and long-term data storage.

Amazon Glacier is the least expensive storage option in S3, but it is strictly designed for archival storage because it takes longer to access the data. Glacier offers variable retrieval rates that range from minutes to hours.

Advantages to AWS S3

Amazon S3 is built with a minimal feature in hope to provide simplicity and robustness. Following are some of advantages of the Amazon S3 service:

• Create Buckets – Create and name a bucket that stores data. Buckets are the fundamental container in Amazon S3 for data storage.
• Store data in Buckets – Store an infinite amount of data in a bucket. Upload as many objects as you like into an Amazon S3 bucket. Each object can contain up to 5 TB of data. Each object is stored and retrieved using a unique developer-assigned key.
• Download data – Download your data or enable others to do so. Download your data any time you like or allow others to do the same.
• Permissions – Grant or deny access to others who want to upload or download data into your Amazon S3 bucket. 
• Standard interfaces – Use standards-based REST and SOAP interfaces designed to work with any Internet-development toolkit.

Amazon S3 Bucket

An Amazon S3 bucket is a public cloud storage resource available in AWS S3. Amazon S3 buckets are similar to file folders, store objects which consist of data and its descriptive metadata. So, a bucket is also defined as a container for objects stored in Amazon S3 i.e. every object is contained in a bucket.

For example,

if the object named photos/mypic.jpg is stored in the JayantSh bucket, then it is addressable using the URL- http://JayantSh.s3.amazonaws.com/photos/mypic.jpg




The buckets are provided as they organize the Amazon S3 namespace at the highest level, they identify the account responsible for storage and data transfer charges, they play a role in access control, and they serve as the unit of aggregation for usage reporting. 

Amazon S3 Objects

Amazon S3 is a key, value store designed to store as many objects as you want. You store these objects in one or more buckets. 

An object consists of the following:

• Key – The name that you assign to an object. You use the object key to retrieve the object. When you create an object, you specify the key name, which uniquely identifies the object in the bucket.
• Version ID – Within a bucket, a key and version ID uniquely identify an object.
  The version ID is a string that Amazon S3 generates when you add an object to a bucket. Object Versioning is used to keep multiple versions of an object in one bucket.
• Value – The content that you are storing. An object value can be any sequence of bytes. Objects can range in size from zero to 5 TB. 
• Metadata – A set of name-value pairs with which you can store information regarding the object. You can assign metadata, referred to as user-defined metadata, to your objects in Amazon S3. 
• Subresources – Amazon S3 uses the subresource mechanism to store object-specific additional information.
• Access Control Information – You can control access to the objects you store in Amazon S3.