Before diving into AWS Storage options let’s learn about the types of storage generally used.
Mainly there are 3:
- Block Storage
- File Storage
- Object Storage
For a deeper understanding refer to this article.
In a nutshell, File Storage is a way of storing files inside folder structure, just as we do in our Mac or Windows devices.
As opposed to the above, object storage is a way of storing files as objects. A file may or may not be divided into pieces and each individual piece is called an object. Each object has 3 attributes associated to it — metadata, object value/info, Object ID — which helps in fetching the data fast and you can also query on objects (unlike Files in File Storage).
Objects are not relational and this storage type is usually only available on cloud, your operating system is not capable of storing files as objects.
Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)
Amazon provides secure, durable and highly scalable object storage via a service called S3. It is easy to use with a simple web service interface.
Features of AWS S3:
- S3 is object based — allows you to upload files
- Files can be from 0 B to 5 TB
- It provides unlimited storage
- Files are stored in buckets — you can create different buckets for different applications to manage it better
- S3 is a universal namespace i.e bucket names should be globally unique
- User receives HTTP 200 OK code after successfully uploading a file
- Allows file versioning — you can also delete individual version of file
- Tiered storage available
- Lifecycle management is provided
- Multiple encryption mechanisms are available
- Multi Factor Authentication delete for files is available
- Secure your data using Access Control Lists and Bucket Policies
Other Storage Services in AWS
Amazon provides block storage facility via the service called Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) and provides file storage via the service called Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) for your compute engine EC2. If you need Windows Native File System (NFS) structure to store your data Amazon also provides Amazon FSx for Windows File Server that does exactly the same.
For storing your files in an archive state Amazon provides a cheaper S3 called the S3 Glacier and S3 Glacier Deep Archive. These storage types can have high retrieval times configurable from a few minutes to a few hours.
