06-S3 Basics

Question 1

What is Simple Storage Service (S3)?

Answer 1

It is AWS’s global object storage platform. It allows users to store and retrieve large amounts of data from anywhere with an internet connection.

Question 2

What resilience level is S3?

Answer 2

Data is stored within a specific AWS region and does not leave that region unless explicitly configured. Data is replicated across AZs within a Region.

Question 3

What is an S3 Object?

Answer 3

They are similar to files and consists of two main parts, the Object Key and Object Value.

Question 4

What is an Object Key?

Answer 4

Similar to a file name, the key uniquely identifies the object within the bucket.

Question 5

What is an Object Value?

Answer 5

The actual data (images, audio files, etc.) stored in the Object.

Question 6

What is the size range of an object?

Answer 6

0 bytes to 5TB

Question 7

What additional components can Objects have?

Answer 7

Metadata, a version ID, access control settings, and sub resources.

Question 8

What is a Bucket?

Answer 8

Buckets are containers for objects. Each Bucket is created in a specific AWS region and stores all objects within that region.

Question 9

What requirements do Bucket names have?

Answer 9

Bucket names must be globally unique across all AWS accounts and Regions. They must be between 3 and 63 characters, all lowercase, and cannot resemble an IP address.

Question 10

What’s the capacity of a Bucket?

Answer 10

Buckets can hold an unlimited number of objects, ranging form 0 to unlimited bytes of data.

Question 11

What is the structure of S3?

Answer 11

It is a flat structure, but does not have a traditional file system with folders. Objects are stored at a root level in the bucket.

Question 12

How can S3 folders be simulated?

Answer 12

Using prefixes (e.g., object keys structured like /folder/koala1.jpg)

Question 13

What access level is S3?

Answer 13

It has Global Access, which means it can be accessible from anywhere with internet, making it suitable for large-scale data storage and distribution.

Question 14

What access methods are available for S3?

Answer 14

S3 data can be access through the GUI, CLI, APIs, or standard methods like HTTP/S.

Question 15

What are the hard and soft limits of Buckets?

Answer 15

Soft limit is 100 buckets per AWS account, but the hard limit is 1000 and can be increased by a support request.

Question 16

What are a some examples for S3?

Answer 16

1 A user stores a large dataset in S3 to track the migration of koalas after a bushfire. The data is stored in a bucket located in the Sydney region and remains in that region unless configured otherwise. 2 A blog stores its images on S3 instead of local storage to reduce compute costs and improve scalability. Images are stored with object keys like blog/images/koala.jpg, and S3 presents these as folders in the UI. 3 An application serving millions of users stores media files in S3. The data is accessed by users worldwide, and S3 handles the scaling automatically without performance degradation.