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Data storage over the cloud is one of the key requirements of cloud computing. Cloud based storage solutions are low cost, reliable and scalable. Major cloud providers such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon provide cloud storage functionality across geographies to enable its users to store and retrieve any amount of data at any given time. These cloud storages are designed for 99.9999% reliability and availability. A plethora of services related to management of storage, data warehousing, websites, applications is provided by these solutions.
In today’s topic we will learn about Amazon S3 essentials cloud storage services, types of AWS storage, AWS S3 key features.
What is Cloud Storage
Before we go deeper into Amazon S3 essentials we need to understand first the concept of cloud storage. Cloud storage is a web-based service where you can store, access and quickly backup data. It is reliable, scalable, and secure as compared to on-premises storage systems. The cloud storage services are available either as Pay only for what you use and Pay on monthly basis. AWS offers various types of storage services such as Amazon S3, EFS, storage gateway, snowball edge, EBS, Glacier, snowball and snowmobile.
Before Amazon S3
Before cloud storage solutions such as AWS S3 or any other cloud provider storage solutions enterprises faced a lot of challenges in storing, finding and managing all their data. Running business applications, content delivery to customers, high web traffic sites, backing up emails required a lot of storage space. It was time consuming and expensive to manage the data repositories due to several challenges as under:
- Storage capacity enhancements require purchase of hardware and software additionally
- Team of experts to manage data repositories
- Lack of scalability usually it was hardware dependent
- Data security was a concern
After Amazon S3
Amazon S3 (simple storage service) is provided by Amazon. It is an object level storage for storing any amount or size of data , any type of data over the Internet. Web services interface is used to provide this storage service. 99.9999% durability and 99.99% availability for objects is provided by Amazon S3. Its storage capacity is 5 terabytes.
Benefits of AWS S3
- 99.9999% durability supported
- Low cost storage with storage classes which let you store and access data based on frequency and requirement for access.
- Pay only what resources you use and there are no hidden costs to meet scalability demands of application and services
- 99.99% availability offering
- Range of access management tools and encryption support for secure storage and access
- Easy to use and simpler way to transfer data
- Flexibility supported with a wide option for usage such as website hosting, data backups, software delivery, data storage, disaster recovery, mobile applications, IoT applications etc.
Amazon S3 Architecture
Amazon S3 comprises objects and buckets. An object has data, key and metadata. Buckets are used to store objects and when data is added into a bucket, AWS S3 creates a unique version ID and assigns it to the object.
How Amazon S3 works
To make Amazon S3 users need to create a bucket first and assign it to a region where this bucket will be deployed. Storage class is determined when files are uploaded into the bucket for specific objects and assigned bucket policy, Lifecycle policies and versioning control. AWS S3 can be deployed for frequent and infrequent access as per the requirement. Frequent access could be data such as office employee’s attendance which requires quick retrieval and infrequent access such as employee’s retirement details which is not required so frequently.
Features of Amazon S3
A specific set of rules are applied to define action for a group of objects in Amazon S3. Moving objects to different storage classes on a defined schedule is done using Transition actions. Expiration actions allow removal of all objects from the storage bucket after a specific interval or time or date.
Bucket policy allows or denies permission to AWS S3 resources. Security rules are defined using bucket policies
Data protection is provided by AWS S3 using data encryption, version control, cross region replication and transfer acceleration. Encryption is enabled both at REST and in TRANSIT for data security. In order to recover, preserve or restore an earlier version of every object stored in a bucket with the same key name but different version IDs. Amazon S3 objects can be automatically copied to different AWS regions. To enable cross-region replication, versioning needs to be enabled. Fast, easy and secure transfer of files over long distances is done with a fast acceleration feature that carries data over an optimized network bridge.
From a single console of AWS S3 buckets can be created, configured and managed. The same console is used to upload, download and manage objects.