AWS S3
AWS object storage service with 99.999999999% durability, unlimited scalability, and multiple storage classes for cost optimization.
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What it is
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is object storage with 11 nines durability (99.999999999%). It stores any amount of data — from bytes to petabytes — with HTTP/HTTPS access. It's the foundation of countless AWS architectures.
Key concepts
- Bucket: object container (globally unique name)
- Object: file + metadata (up to 5TB per object)
- Key: object path/name within the bucket
- Versioning: version history for each object
Storage classes
| Class | Use | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | Frequent access | Base |
| Intelligent-Tiering | Variable access | Auto-optimizes |
| Standard-IA | Infrequent access | -40% |
| Glacier | Archives, minutes retrieval | -70% |
| Glacier Deep Archive | Archives, hours retrieval | -95% |
Serverless integrations
- Event notifications: trigger Lambda when object is uploaded/modified
- Static website hosting: serve static sites directly
- CloudFront: CDN for global distribution
- Athena: SQL queries over S3 data
Security
- Bucket policies and ACLs for access control
- Server-side encryption (SSE-S3, SSE-KMS)
- Block Public Access by default
- Access Points for granular access
Why it matters
S3 is the most fundamental AWS service — object storage with 11 nines of durability. It is the foundation for data lakes, backups, static hosting, CI/CD artifacts, and content distribution. Mastering its storage classes and lifecycle policies is essential for cost optimization.
References
- S3 Documentation — Official documentation.
- S3 Security Best Practices — AWS, 2024. Security best practices.
- S3 Storage Classes — AWS, 2024. Storage classes and cost optimization.