What is Amazon Simple Storage Service Amazon S3

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In this article we will be discussing about Amazon Simple Storage Service Amazon S3.

In basic form Amazon Simple Storage Service Amazon S3 is an cloud storage system on AWS. Unlike EBS which is an Block level storage this Amazon Simple Storage Service Amazon S3 is an object level storage.

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Features of Amazon Simple Storage Service Amazon S3

• Amazon Simple Storage Service Amazon S3 is an object level.

Meaning that the files are stored and accessed as objects and developer can access this object using REST API.

• Accessible as a link

Once you stored object inside S3 you can access files or objects using HTTP URL.

• Unlimited storage of data

With Amazon Simple Storage Service Amazon S3 you can basically store unlimited data on cloud since this is highly elastic.

• Stored inside bucket

Your all objects or files are stored inside bucket. You can imagine bucket similar to folder or directory where we used to store file in our conventional operating system.

• Bucket name should be universally unique

Since bucket uses universal namespace it must be unique.

• Confirmation of object upload

Once your are successfully uploaded object or file inside Bucket you will get HTTP 200 code.

• File Size limits

File can be from 0 byte upto 5TB in size.

• Additional option

You can set following additional options on S3 for more security as well as availability

1. Life cycle management: Help to move down to different tier of storage for cost effectiveness.
2. Versioning: This will help you to keep different versions of data of same object.
3. Encryption: You can able to select different encryption types for more security.
4. ACL and bucket policies: You can also enable ACL (Access control list) and bucket policies for restricting objects access within Bucket

Please read following articles for more details:

1. Creating|configuring Bucket in AWS S3
2. Uploading objects in S3 bucket