Amazon S3 Overview
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Brief overview of one of the oldest services.
Disclaimer:
This is the sixth article from series about Amazon Web Services (AWS) which I will write as a preparation to the Certified developer exam associate.
What is Amazon S3?
Amazon S3 stands for Simple Storage Service. Shortly — it’s a cloud file storage, where you can store your files and they will be available and replicated in different Data centers to provide consistency and fast response to different clients in different places in the world. For me, this is the main benefit — low latency and fast download of static content.
Main principles:
Amazon S3 contains buckets and objects. In the simple case bucket can be treated as folder and object as file. The name of the bucket and object must be unique. User can create buckets, add, remove, change objects.
Main features:
S3 Websites
That’s right, you can mark bucket as a static website, create index and error pages and use it as a hosting. It can be useful when you want to create simple site or using such architecture as JAMStack.
Versioning
You can set versioning on and all changes with your file will have version. You can easily switch between versions and see what was changed.
Security
Wide variety of security techniques and policies. It is possible to set security rules for users and groups, or for resources. Resources policy stored in JSON format and applies to the bucket and objects inside it. You can also block or allow public access to the bucket.
Encryption
There’s a few ways to encrypt your objects in S3, Amazon has a few ways how to encrypt data and you can use your own client-side encryption.
Conclusion
S3 is one of the oldest and widely used technology in AWS. It allows you to store your files and make them highly available for the internet with wide variety of security options.
