AWS S3 Explained — Buckets, Storage Classes, Security & Use Cases
What Is Amazon S3?
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is an object storage service that provides 11 nines durability (99.999999999%). It stores data as objects inside buckets.
Core S3 Concepts
- Buckets: Top-level container
- Objects: Files stored inside buckets
- Keys: Object names
- Versioning: Tracks old versions of objects
- Encryption: SSE-S3, SSE-KMS
Storage Classes
- S3 Standard
- S3 Infrequent Access (IA)
- S3 One Zone IA
- S3 Glacier
- S3 Glacier Deep Archive
Useful S3 Features
- Bucket policies
- Lifecycle rules
- Cross-Region Replication
- S3 Events (trigger Lambda)
- Access Control Lists
Use Cases
- Static website hosting
- Backups and archives
- Data lakes
- Log storage
- Machine learning datasets
Conclusion
S3 is the most flexible cloud storage solution. It is widely used in multiple industries and AWS exams.
