Introduction to AWS Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) is one of the most popular storage services by Amazon Web Services.

If you're looking to get familiar with Amazon S3, you're in the right place. Today we'll discuss Amazon S3's most notable features and use cases, and how you can get started with S3.

About AWS Simple Storage Service (S3)

Amazon S3 is a storage solution that works on the pay-as-you-go model that can store any type and size of file and metadata. It offers solutions to every size of customer for a wide range of scenarios. For instance, we can use S3 as a destination for internet data, backup solutions, hosting a static website, and archiving data.

Amazon S3 is a global service, which means that the S3 resources are managed globally to provide simplicity in naming and efficiency in the storage system.

Amazon S3 storage classes?

Amazon S3 offers different storage classes with specific functionalities, features, and use cases.

The Amazon S3 storage classes include:

• S3 Standard or S3 Express One Zone: These storage classes store data that needs to be accessed frequently. We can use these options to keep our production data.

• S3 Standard-IA or S3 One Zone-IA: These classes are cost-effective solutions to store data inaccessible often.

• S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval, S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval, and S3 Glacier Deep Archive: These are the cheapest classes used to archive data that will not be accessed in the near future. Companies can utilize these classes to keep data for compliance purposes. S3 allows us to define the life cycle of the data as to when it should move to the Amazon S3 Glacier and how long it should be retained before permanent deletion.

Amazon S3 buckets

Amazon S3 uses buckets to store and organize objects.

Here are a few important points related to S3 buckets:

• A bucket can contain any number of objects.

• An AWS account can have up to 100 buckets. This limit can be extended upon request.

• The bucket’s name should be globally unique. We can’t create a bucket with a name already used in any other AWS Region or AWS account within a partition.

• We can create buckets using APIs, AWS CLI, and AWS Management Console. Check out this Answer to get hands-on experience creating an S3 bucket using CLI commands.

• We must choose an AWS Region close to our deployment to reduce network latency and increase throughput.

Prerequisites for creating an Amazon S3 bucket

Before we work with AWS resources, we need to set up and configure the AWS environment. Here are a few prerequisites for working with Amazon S3.

• Must have an active AWS account

• Multi-factor authentication (MFA) enabled (recommended)

• Must have secret access key and access key ID (for programmatic access)

• Must have permissions on the AWS profile to perform these actions

• AWS CLI must be installed on the machine (for programmatic access)

Advanced features of Amazon S3

Amazon S3 has several important features that help us manage buckets and objects more easily and efficiently.

Amazon S3 life cycle management

S3 life cycle management allows us to manage objects and perform specific actions based on some defined rules. There are two types of management in the S3 life cycle; one is to transit the objects from one storage class to another based on some rules due to cost optimization, regulatory compliance, or an organization’s policy. The S3 life cycle management also helps handle an object’s deletion using life cycle rules.

Amazon S3 bucket policy

AWS S3 bucket policy, also known as S3 resource-based policy, is a set of rules that helps us manage the resources in an S3 bucket using the IAM-based policy. We can use the bucket policy to control object-level permissions. Amazon S3 buckets also have access control lists (ACLs) to control read/write permissions on the objects for authorized users, but it is recommended that we use the S3 bucket policy to manage access.

Amazon S3 versioning and cross-region replication

S3 versioning allows us to keep different versions of an object and restore it in case of an accidental deletion. The versioning is enabled on an S3 bucket, and once enabled, the new versions of objects inside the bucket are assigned a version ID. Deleting an object from a version-enabled bucket puts a delete marker on the object instead of deleting it so that we can restore the object if required.

Cross-region replication is another important feature of Amazon S3. It allows objects to be replicated from one AWS Region to another.

Static web hosting with S3

Amazon S3 allows us to host static web pages that can be served over the internet without needing any domain and hosting. We can also configure an error page to be displayed in case of accessing the wrong directory with the S3 hosting endpoint.

Amazon S3 also allows us to host a static website using a CDN service, Amazon CloudFront.

Amazon S3 batch operations

Amazon S3 batch operations allow us to perform an operation on a list of objects. We create a job defining the operation to be performed on a list of objects. An operation is an API call or an actual action, like copying the objects or invoking a Lambda function to perform some tasks.

Getting started with Amazon S3

That concludes our introduction to Amazon S3! We hope you found this information helpful.

To get your hands dirty with Amazon S3 skills, Educative offers Cloud Labs, where you can work directly with AWS cloud services without the setup, cleanup, or the need for an AWS account.

We have various Cloud Labs where you can learn to use the features we discuss today:

• Working with AWS S3 Cross-Region Replication for versioning and cross-region replication

• Resizing Images with S3 Batch Operations and AWS Lambda to work with batch operations

• Configuring a Static Website with S3 and CloudFront for static web hosting

• Understanding AWS Storage Options—From Zero to Hero to get hands-on with different AWS storage options: Amazon S3, Elastic Block Storage (EBS) and Elastic File System (EFS)

You may also want to check out these hands-on courses covering AWS S3 and beyond: