What is AWS S3? Types, Bucket & Features

For companies of all sizes, data management and storage are essential in today's digital environment. Offering dependable, scalable, and reasonably priced storage for a range of applications, Amazon Simple Storage Service (AWS S3) is one of the most well-liked cloud storage options.

Whether you are analyzing large datasets, hosting static websites, or storing backups, S3 offers the security and flexibility you need to effectively manage your data. This tutorial examines the foundational elements of AWS S3, such as its storage classes, bucket structure, and salient characteristics.

Further, you can also enroll in our online AWS training courses where our instructors have provided courses on various AWS cloud subjects and certifications.

What is AWS S3? 

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is a highly scalable and secure object storage solution designed for diverse applications. It enables businesses of all sizes to store, manage, analyze, and protect vast amounts of data efficiently.

S3 supports use cases such as data lakes, cloud-native applications, and mobile apps, offering cost-effective storage classes and intuitive management tools. With its advanced access control features, organizations can optimize costs, streamline data organization, and ensure compliance with business and regulatory requirements.

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Features of AWS S3 

The following are the important features: 

Storage Classes 

Amazon S3 offers multiple storage classes tailored for various use cases. For frequently accessed, mission-critical data, S3 Standard and S3 Express One Zone provide high-performance storage.

To reduce costs for infrequently accessed data, S3 Standard-IA and S3 One Zone-IA are ideal. For long-term archival at the lowest costs, options include S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval, S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval, and S3 Glacier Deep Archive. 

S3 Express One Zone 

S3 Express One Zone is a high-speed, single-zone storage class built for latency-sensitive applications. It delivers ultra-fast data access—up to 10 times faster than S3 Standard—while reducing request costs by 50%.

This is the lowest-latency object storage class in the cloud, allowing users to colocate storage with computing resources for the fastest access speeds. Additionally, S3 Express One Zone introduces a directory bucket structure to handle hundreds of thousands of requests per second efficiently. 

S3 Intelligent-Tiering 

For data with unpredictable or shifting access patterns, S3 Intelligent Tiering optimizes costs by automatically moving data across four access tiers. These include two low-latency tiers for frequent and infrequent access, plus two optional archive tiers for rarely accessed data. 

Storage Management Features 

Amazon S3 provides several tools to help users manage storage costs, comply with regulations, and improve performance: 

● S3 Lifecycle Management: Automate the transition of objects between storage classes based on pre-defined rules, or set expiration policies to delete obsolete data. 

● S3 Object Lock: Protect objects from deletion or modification for a fixed period or indefinitely, ensuring compliance with write-once-read-many (WORM) policies. 

● S3 Replication: Copy objects, metadata, and tags across different buckets or AWS Regions to enhance durability, performance, and compliance. 

● S3 Batch Operations: Execute large-scale operations on billions of objects with a single API request, such as copying, restoring, or invoking AWS Lambda functions. 

Security and Access Management 

Amazon S3 provides robust security features to control and monitor access to storage resources: 

● S3 Block Public Access: Prevent accidental public exposure by blocking public access to buckets and objects by default. 

● AWS IAM (Identity and Access Management): Define fine-grained permissions for users and groups to access specific AWS resources. 

● Bucket Policies: Implement resource-based policies to control access at the bucket or object level. 

● S3 Access Points: Create customized network endpoints with specific access policies to manage large-scale data access efficiently. 

● Access Control Lists (ACLs): Assign individual permissions to specific users, although IAM policies and bucket policies are preferred for simplified access management. 

● S3 Object Ownership: Ensure that the bucket owner has full control over all objects, simplifying access management by disabling ACLs. 

● IAM Access Analyzer for S3: Continuously evaluate S3 policies to ensure they only grant intended access permissions. 

Data Processing and Automation 

Amazon S3 enables advanced data transformation and workflow automation through: 

● S3 Object Lambda: Modify and process data on the fly during GET, HEAD, or LIST requests. This allows on-demand transformations such as data filtering, image resizing, and redacting sensitive information. 

● Event Notifications: Automatically trigger actions using Amazon SNS, Amazon SQS, or AWS Lambda when objects are created, deleted, or modified. 

Monitoring and Analytics 

S3 offers a variety of tools to track storage usage, monitor access, and optimize performance: 

1. Automated Monitoring 

● Amazon CloudWatch Metrics: Measure storage performance and configure billing alerts. 

● AWS CloudTrail: Log and analyze API requests at both the bucket and object levels. 

2. Manual Monitoring 

● Server Access Logging: Maintain detailed logs of all requests made to a bucket for security auditing and usage analysis. 

● AWS Trusted Advisor: Identify potential optimizations in security, performance, and cost management based on AWS best practices. 

Analytics and Insights 

● S3 Storage Lens: Gain deep visibility into storage usage, providing over 60 usage and activity metrics across AWS Regions, accounts, or buckets. 

● Storage Class Analysis: Identify long-term access trends to determine the best storage class for cost savings. 

● S3 Inventory Reports: Generate reports on object metadata, replication status, and encryption compliance to support audits and automate management tasks. 

Benefits Of AWS S3 

The following are the various benefits of AWS S3  

● Amazon S3 offers virtually unlimited storage, allowing businesses to scale seamlessly as their data grows. Whether you're storing a few gigabytes or petabytes of data, S3 automatically manages capacity and performance without requiring manual intervention.  

● Amazon S3 is designed for 99.999999999% (11 nines) durability by automatically storing multiple copies of data across different Availability Zones (AZs). This redundancy ensures that data remains intact even in case of hardware failures.  

● S3 provides multiple security layers, including encryption (both at rest and in transit), fine-grained access control using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), and advanced compliance features.  

● Amazon S3 offers a cost-effective pay-as-you-go pricing model, allowing businesses to optimize costs based on storage class selection and data retrieval needs.  

● S3 seamlessly integrates with AWS services like AWS Lambda for serverless computing, Amazon Athena for SQL-based querying, Amazon Redshift for data warehousing, and AWS Backup for automated data protection.  

● Amazon S3 provides robust lifecycle management features that allow users to define policies for automatically transitioning objects between storage classes (e.g., from S3 Standard to S3 Glacier) or deleting outdated data.  

Use Cases of AWS S3 

The following are some of the use cases of Amazon S3: 

● Amazon S3 serves as a foundation for building scalable, secure, and cost-effective data lakes. It can store vast amounts of structured and unstructured data from multiple sources, enabling businesses to run analytics, machine learning (ML), and big data processing workloads.  

● S3 provides a reliable and durable backup solution for businesses, protecting against accidental deletion, data corruption, and cyber threats. Organizations can use S3 as a target for backups from on-premises systems, databases, and applications. 

● With storage classes like S3 Glacier and S3 Glacier Deep Archive, businesses can securely store infrequently accessed or long-term archival data at a low cost.  

● Amazon S3 plays a crucial role in generative AI workflows by storing large datasets required for training and fine-tuning AI models. It integrates with AWS AI/ML services such as Amazon SageMaker, AWS Trainium, and AWS Inferentia, enabling businesses to build, train, and deploy generative AI models efficiently.  

● Organizations use S3 as a data repository for big data workloads, enabling efficient storage, retrieval, and analysis of massive datasets.  

● S3 is widely used for storing and distributing media files such as videos, images, and music. When integrated with Amazon CloudFront (AWS’s Content Delivery Network), businesses can serve content globally with low latency and high availability.  

● S3 supports cross-region replication (CRR), enabling businesses to maintain copies of critical data in geographically separated locations for disaster recovery. This ensures business continuity in the event of regional failures, system outages, or cybersecurity threats. 

● Internet of Things (IoT) applications generate massive amounts of sensor data that need to be stored and processed efficiently. Amazon S3 serves as a backend storage solution for IoT data, integrating seamlessly with AWS IoT 

How Does Amazon S3 Works 

Data is stored in buckets on Amazon S3 as objects. A file and its accompanying metadata are considered objects. An object's container is a bucket. To save your data on Amazon S3, you must first establish a bucket and choose an AWS Region and bucket name.

After that, you use Amazon S3 to upload your data as objects to that bucket. The unique identifier for each object in the bucket is its key, often known as its key name. 

S3 provides features that you can configure to support your specific use case. For example, you can use S3 Versioning to keep multiple versions of an object in the same bucket, which allows you to restore objects that are accidentally deleted or overwritten.

Buckets and the objects in them are private and can only be accessed with explicitly granted access permissions. You can use bucket policies, AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies, S3 Access Points, and access control lists (ACLs) to manage access. 

Types of AWS S3 Storage Classes 

Amazon S3 offers a variety of storage classes designed to meet different performance, cost, and data access needs. These classes help businesses optimize storage costs while maintaining the required availability, durability, and retrieval speeds.

AWS also provides lifecycle policies to automatically transition data between storage classes, ensuring efficient cost management. 

1. Amazon S3 Standard (S3 Standard) 

S3 Standard is designed for frequently accessed data that requires low latency and high throughput. It offers: 

Durability & Availability: 99.999999999% (11 nines) durability and high availability. 

Use Cases: Websites, mobile applications, big data analytics, and cloud-native applications. 

Performance: Optimized for real-time, high-performance workloads. 

2. Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering (S3 Intelligent-Tiering) 

This class automatically moves data between frequent and infrequent access tiers based on usage patterns. Key benefits include: 

Cost Optimization: Automatically lowers costs without affecting performance. 

Zero Operational Overhead: No manual intervention is required. 

Best For: Workloads with unpredictable access patterns, such as machine learning datasets and media archives. 

3. Amazon S3 Express One Zone 

S3 Express One Zone is built for ultra-low latency and high-speed access in a single AWS Availability Zone. It is ideal for: 

Use Cases: AI/ML processing, high-speed analytics, and real-time applications. 

Performance: Provides the fastest access compared to other S3 storage classes. 

Cost Efficiency: Lower-cost alternative for workloads that do not require multi-zone redundancy. 

4. Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) 

S3 Standard-IA is designed for data that is accessed less frequently but requires quick retrieval. Features include: 

Low Storage Cost: Lower pricing than S3 Standard but with retrieval fees. 

High Availability: Multi-AZ redundancy for disaster recovery and backup. 

Use Cases: Backup storage, disaster recovery, and long-term cloud storage. 

5. Amazon S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA) 

S3 One Zone-IA stores data in a single AWS Availability Zone, making it more cost-effective. It is best for: 

Lower-cost Storage: 20% cheaper than Standard-IA. 

Use Cases: Secondary backups, re-creatable data, or logs that do not require multi-AZ resilience. 

Trade-off: Less redundancy than Standard-IA since data is stored in a single zone. 

6. Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval 

This class offers low-cost archival storage with millisecond retrieval times. Key benefits include: 

Fast Retrieval: Ideal for infrequently accessed data that requires instant access. 

Use Cases: Media archives, healthcare records, and compliance data. 

Cost Savings: Cheaper than Standard-IA while maintaining fast access. 

7. Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval (Formerly S3 Glacier) 

Designed for long-term data storage with flexible retrieval options. Features include: 

Multiple Retrieval Speeds: Expedited (minutes), Standard (hours), and Bulk (days). 

Use Cases: Backups, legal archives, and historical datasets. 

Cost Efficiency: Lower-cost storage compared to active data tiers. 

8. Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive 

The lowest-cost Amazon S3 storage class, designed for long-term archiving. Features: 

Ultra-Low Cost: The cheapest S3 storage for rarely accessed data. 

Long Retrieval Time: 12 to 48 hours for data retrieval. 

Use Cases: Compliance archives, legal records, and long-term backups. 

9. Amazon S3 Storage Classes for AWS Dedicated Local Zones 

This storage class provides ultra-low latency storage within AWS Dedicated Local Zones. Benefits include: 

Use Cases: Applications needing fast local data access with AWS cloud integration. 

Data Residency: Ensures compliance with strict geographic data storage policies. 

Performance: Low latency storage for critical applications. 

10. Amazon S3 on Outposts 

Amazon S3 on Outposts extends AWS storage to on-premises environments. It offers: 

Local Storage: Enables S3 capabilities on customer-owned infrastructure. 

Compliance & Security: Ideal for industries requiring data to stay on-site. 

Use Cases: Financial services, healthcare, and government agencies. 

Amazon S3 Buckets and Objects 

Amazon S3 provides scalable object storage for various data types, such as photos, videos, and documents. Before uploading data, you must first create an S3 bucket within an AWS Region. Each bucket acts as a container for objects, which consist of data, a key (unique identifier), and metadata. 

Types of Amazon S3 Buckets 

Amazon S3 offers two primary bucket types to accommodate different storage needs: 

1. General Purpose Buckets 

● The original bucket type is designed for most workloads and access patterns. 

● Supports objects across all storage classes except S3 Express One Zone. 

● Recommended for standard applications requiring high durability and availability. 

2. Directory Buckets 

● Optimized for performance-sensitive applications with single-digit millisecond PUT and GET latencies. 

● Uses S3 Express One Zone storage for high-speed data retrieval. 

● Best suited for workloads requiring low-latency access in a specific AWS Region. 

Working with General Purpose Buckets 

A general-purpose bucket serves as a scalable container for storing any number of objects. Each AWS account has a default limit of 10,000 general-purpose buckets, which can be managed through the Service Quotas console. 

Key Features: 

● Each object is stored in a specific AWS Region and does not leave that region unless explicitly transferred. 

● S3 provides a unique URL for each object, enabling easy retrieval. 

● Buckets and objects are managed through APIs, the AWS CLI, or the Amazon S3 Console. 

Example Object URL: 

If an object named photos/puppy.jpg is stored in a bucket named amzn-s3-demo-bucket in the US West (Oregon) Region, it can be accessed via: 

https://amzn-s3-demo-bucket.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/photos/puppy.jpg 

Amazon S3 Bucket Configuration Options 

Amazon S3 provides various configuration options to optimize storage management, security, and performance. 

Step 1. Bucket Naming and Region Selection 

Bucket names must be globally unique across AWS accounts within a partition. 

AWS has three partitions: Standard Regions (aws), China Regions (aws-cn), and AWS GovCloud (aws-us-gov). 

Selecting a geographically close Region helps minimize latency and comply with regulatory requirements. 

Step 2. Common Bucket Patterns 

Applications can use separate buckets for different datasets or workloads. 

Best practices recommend structuring buckets based on data access frequency and storage class requirements. 

Step 3. Permissions and Access Management 

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is recommended for bucket access control instead of root user credentials. 

The AWS account that creates a bucket retains ownership and must grant explicit permissions for others to manage it. 

Step 4. Public Access Management 

Amazon S3 offers Block Public Access settings to restrict unauthorized access. 

By default, new buckets have all four public access block settings enabled to enhance security. 

For public content (e.g., static websites), use Amazon CloudFront with origin access control (OAC) for secure delivery. 

Conclusion 

AWS S3 is a powerful and flexible cloud storage service that provides scalable, secure, and cost-effective data storage. Whether you're hosting static websites, archiving data, or performing big data analytics, S3’s range of storage classes and features make it a versatile solution for various use cases.