S3

Question 1

S3 Basics

Answer 1

Object-based and allows you to upload files, and files only.
Not suitable to install an operating system on.
successful uploads will generate an HTTP 200 status code.

Question 2

File Size Limit for files in S3?

Answer 2

0B to 5 TB.
Unlimited Storage
All Files are stored in Buckets

Question 3

S3 Naming Convention / Buckets

Answer 3

Names use a universal namespace.
Names must be globally unique (not specific to a region)
Buckets are similar to folders
data is stored in key-value pairs.

Question 4

S3 Data Consistency Model

Answer 4

1) read after write for PUTS of new objects

2) eventual consistency for overwrite PUTS and DELETES

Question 5

What are the 3 storage classes/tiers of S3?

Answer 5

S3 (Durable, immediately available, frequently accessed).
S3-IA (Durable, immediately available, infrequently accessed).
S3-IA One Zone (Durable, immediately available, infrequently accessed, only available in one availability Zone).

Question 6

S3 Core Fundamentals

Answer 6

This is a key/value store.
Key - Name
Value - Data
Version ID - Version ID
Metadata - data about data (tags)
subresources
ACL
Torrent

Question 7

S3 Encryption Options:

Answer 7

In transit: SSL/TLS

At Rest:

1) Client Side Encryption
2) Server Side Encryption (SSE)
2a) Amazon S3 Managed keys (SSE-S3)
2b) KMS (SSE-KMS) (provides audit logs)
2c) Customer-Provided Keys (SSE-C)

Question 8

How do you control Bucket Access ?

Answer 8

1) Bucket ACL
2) Bucket Policies
(By default buckets are private and all objects stored inside them are private)

Question 9

Versioning

Answer 9

1) Stores all versions of an object. (inclusive of writes and deletes)
2) A great backup tool
3) Can be integrated with life-cycle rules
Remember: You pay for each version of an object.

Question 10

Can versioning be disabled?

Answer 10

No, versioning can never be disabled, only suspended.

Question 11

Versioning + MFA

Answer 11

Versioning can integrate MFA with the delete option.

Question 12

What is CRR ?

Answer 12

Cross Region Replication.

Question 13

CRR Requirements

Answer 13

1) Versioning must be enabled on both the source and destination buckets.
2) Regions must be unique.
3) Files in an existing bucket are not replicated automatically.

Question 14

CRR Restrictions:

Answer 14

1) You cannot replicate to multiple buckets.
2) You cannot Daisy chain your multiple region buckets.
3) Delete markers are not replicated.
4) Deleting individual versions or delete markers will not be replicated.

Question 15

S3 Lifecycle Management

Answer 15

Can be used in conjunction with versioning
Can be applied to current and previous versions.
Transition to S3-IA requires the following: size is greater than 128KB and the object is 30 days old.

Question 16

S3 Lifecycle Management Actions:

Answer 16

Transition to the standard IA storage class after 30 days of creation.
Archive to the Glacier storage Class (30 days after IA, if relevant.
Permanently Delete items.

Question 17

Question:

If you are looking to reduce storage costs how would you go about doing this?

Answer 17

Lifecycle Management

Question 18

How can you Secure your S3 Buckets ?

Answer 18

1) They are set to private by default.
2) You can setup ACLs
3) You can create Bucket Policies

S3 Buckets can be configured to create access logs which log all requests made to the S3 bucket.

Question 19

File Gateways

Answer 19

For flat files, stored directly on S3.

Question 20

Volume Gateways

Answer 20

there are 2, stored and cached volumes.

• the entire data set is stored on site and is backed up to S3 (asynchronous)
• cached - the entire data set is in s3, but only the most frequently accessed data is cached on site.

Question 21

Virtual Tape Library (VTL) Gateways

Answer 21

Presents an iscsi tape to backup software such as netbackup, backup exec, veeam etc.

Question 22

What is Snowball?

Answer 22

It is a replacement to AWS Import / Export Service.

• secure transport.
• 50TB (USA) 80TB (World) storage
• 256 AES encryption
• import to S3
• Export to S3

Question 23

Snowball Edge ?

Answer 23

It is a snowball with compute functionality.

* AWS DC in a box.

Question 24

Snow Mobile

Answer 24

This is a container on a truck, designed for massive amounts of data migration.

• Peta and Exabyte sized storage.
• USA only

Question 25

What is S3 transfer acceleration?

Answer 25

Allows you to transfer to a local edge location, and then AWS takes care of the copying it to your S3 Bucket on the AWS backbone.

cloudfront uses s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com domains

Question 26

S3 as a static website

Answer 26

• No PHP, no [dot]NET.

* websites that require DB connections cannot be hosted on S3.

Question 27

S3 Scaling ?

Answer 27

This is done automatically.
Enterprises will put static websites on S3 when they think there is going to be a large number of requests.
(such as a movie preview)