AWS S3 - definition & overview

Predicting and provisioning your storage space needs can be a complex challenge. The Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) application brings cloud-based, scalable, affordable and reliable storage options under your command. Amazon S3 is an object store that uses unique key values to store as many objects as you want. You store these objects in one or more buckets.

Historically, preparing for your digital storage needs was a combination of forecasting and guesswork, often resulting in insufficient space for a business's needs or, perhaps even worse, massively and expensively overbuilt storage, most of which needs to be improved.

But thanks to Amazon S3, modern organizations and enterprises have a powerful new way to dynamically shape, predict and scale storage needs, using (and paying for) only the space you need at any given time. Amazon S3 gives you deep insights into storage patterns and usage activity, allowing you to troubleshoot and resize storage buckets on the fly and deliver the optimal user experience.

Under Amazon S3 architecture, you store data in scaleable containers known as buckets. Buckets can contain almost any data, from tiny text files to massive databases or multimedia repositories.

An Amazon S3 bucket is created and managed in the S3 web interface console, where users oversee their object storage infrastructure and options. But unlike standard cloud storage folders, an S3 bucket comes with API and fine-tuning options to help you optimize storage costs. Built-in monitors tell you what buckets your users are accessing most, and you only pay for the storage and data services you require on a given day.

An AWS S3 bucket can also be moved anywhere worldwide in moments, transferred easily to any of the many AWS S3 storage locations around the globe. S3 also offers the unique AWS Transfer Acceleration, a custom service that takes advantage of the AWS global network to speed file movement by up to 500 percent.

This off-site redundancy and accessibility would represent significant investments in privately owned infrastructure. With S3, you can run with a truly decentralized, redundant storage solution in minutes.

You can use the Amazon S3 console to view an overview of an object.

To transfer files over long distances between your client and an S3 bucket, Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration optimizes transfer speeds across the world into an S3 bucket.

Amazon S3 Storage Lens is a cloud-storage analytics feature that you can use to gain organization-wide visibility into object-storage usage and activity.

The Amazon S3 Intelligent Tiering storage class optimizes storage costs by automatically moving data to the most cost-effective access tier when access patterns change. S3 Intelligent Tiering monitors access patterns and automatically moves objects for a small monthly object monitoring and automation charge.

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) also provides three Amazon S3 Glacier deep archive storage classes. These storage classes are for different access patterns and storage duration.

On the Amazon S3 console, you can use Access Analyzer for S3 to review buckets with bucket access control lists (ACLs), bucket policies, or access point policies that grant public or shared access.

Data stored in the cloud generally fall into three categories. Amazon S3 manages each of these from the central console:

Frequent access data Think of this as the day-to-day data used or created in everyday business operations. Frequently accessed data is the standard model in Amazon S3, with low latency, high availability and scalable throughput to make sure resources are available no matter what the daily traffic.

It's important to save infrequent access to data logs, archived orders, and other important information, but it is optional daily. Amazon S3 offers lower storage and access fees per gigabyte for this data, maximizing the efficiency of your cloud storage budget. Using the S3 web console, you can move data between frequent and infrequent storage classes with no changes to core applications.

Yearly records, past sales activity, and other data must be safely locked away but typically require rare retrieval or none. Amazon solved this storage challenge with Amazon S3 Glacier. Amazon S3 Glacier offers highly affordable storage costs in exchange for a slower but reliable retrieval speed and provides affordable long-term storage.

For infrequently accessed data, S3 One Zone IA allows customers to store this data within a single Availability Zone at a 20% lower cost than S3 Standard IA.

Amazon Redshift and Amazon S3 provide a unified, natively integrated storage layer for data lakes. You can move data between Amazon Redshift and Amazon S3 using the Amazon Redshift COPY and UNLOAD commands.

Amazon S3 simplifies identifying and managing traffic. You can spot traffic trends and sudden drop-offs by region to investigate anomalies and compare them to normal baselines. If sudden bursts of traffic from unusual regions request access to your data, S3 helps you identify and respond to these potential threats.

S3 Geolocations lets you see the sources and destinations of traffic and make moves to improve performance and secure your data.
Geo tracking helps identify good traffic patterns and adjust your AWS resources to serve particular regions. The insights from S3 logs can provide actionable information about where, when and how long your users are active. You can physically move storage buckets to different S3 storage sites to make them closer and more quickly accessible to target users.

A fast, clean user experience is key to any cloud service. Amazon S3 helps you detect where your network is bottlenecked and easily make the necessary changes to improve performance.

Underneath the smooth graphic interfaces that simplify modern data management, typical network activity still consists primarily of the following data requests:

• GET: a user requests access to an object
• PUT: requests permission to add data to resource and make it available via URL
• LIST: a simple inventory requesting the contents of a resource
• DELETE: a restricted privilege for removing a resource

A basic Amazon S3 configuration provisions storage buckets to handle 300 PUT/LIST/DELETE and 800 GET requests per second. If your traffic patterns exceed this threshold, then latency issues may develop. You can address them by duplicating resources or adding additional ones to ensure your user experience remains optimal.

On the other hand, an analysis may reveal buckets in active storage that are rarely visited, moving them to the less-expense infrequent access data class.

This management takes place in the S3 web management console, giving you full control of your latencies and storage configurations from anywhere in the world.

From the office or on the go, access and manage your S3 account from the AWS management console.

A wealth of critical information about your network and applications resides in the errors monitored and logged in Amazon S3. Amazon provides a complete list of codes generated when something in your operation goes awry, but common ones include:

Access Denied

Improper permission settings on new or moved resources or malice can cause a user's request to produce a ‘403 Forbidden' URL. Repeated 'Access Denied' errors from one region or targeting particular resources are good indicators of hacking attempts or malware. S3 makes it easy to capture these errors, trace them to sources, and take corrective actions.

Slow Down

Lots of traffic is generally good for business, but this error, which produces a ‘503 Slow Down' code in the logs, usually indicates that one region or resource is getting too much traffic. S3 buckets come standardly configured with maximum request rates, so this error tells you attention is necessary on one or more of them.

Invalid Request

Though this error code in your S3 logs can indicate various issues, it commonly appears when using Amazon's Transfer Acceleration on misconfigured buckets that don't support it. The cure for 'Invalid Request' errors can often be as simple as clicking the Transfer Acceleration enable box in the S3 management console.

There are many different error codes, and the ones appearing in your S3 logs can come from various causes. But the data you need to act quickly is always at your fingertips.

Amazon S3's key strength lies in leveraging the power of its global network. Without building out a massive international infrastructure, staffing it with trained professionals, and hiring 24/7 security experts to keep things running safely, S3 offers comparable capabilities with none of the overhead.

Amazon Web Services offer tools and plugins that expand on S3's power, like CloudFront, a global content delivery service that accelerates the delivery of your AWS content to users worldwide.

S3 is a safe and viable option for any new or changing organization. It's the easiest, fastest, and most affordable way to tackle your IT challenges.

Learn more about the Sumo Logic App for S3, or create a free trial account today to get started.