S3 — Infinitely Scalable Object Storage

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is object storage with unlimited capacity, 99.999999999% (11 9s) durability, and accessed via HTTP.

Key concepts:

Bucket — container for objects; globally unique name; tied to a region

Object — any file + metadata; up to 5 TB; identified by key (filename)

Key — full path of the object in the bucket

S3 storage classes (cost vs. access tradeoff):

S3 Standard — frequently accessed data; highest cost; lowest latency

S3 Intelligent-Tiering — auto moves objects between tiers based on access patterns

S3 Standard-IA — infrequent access; lower cost; retrieval fee

S3 One Zone-IA — single AZ; even cheaper; less resilient

S3 Glacier Instant — archive; millisecond retrieval

S3 Glacier Flexible — archive; 1–12 hour retrieval

S3 Glacier Deep Archive — cheapest; 12–48 hour retrieval

S3 versioning: Preserves all versions of objects. Protects against accidental deletion and overwrites.

Reference:

Wikipedia: Amazon S3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_S3