Programming Amazon Web Services

Chapter 3. S3: Simple Storage Service

Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3) provides unlimited online storage space for files or data of any kind. Information stored in S3 is accessible from anywhere you have an Internet connection and is maintained in a highly scalable and reliable system. You can use S3 to securely store your personal data, to cheaply distribute content to the general public, or as a data storage component in a distributed web application architecture.

Amazon offers a Service Level Agreement for S3 that makes users eligible for service credits should the S3 uptime percentage fall below 99.9%. To claim these credits, users of the service must track any faults experienced by their applications due to S3 downtime, and they must provide Amazon with detailed logging documentation to corroborate the claim. For more information, refer to the Amazon S3 Service Level Agreement at http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=379654011.

S3 Overview

S3’s data model is very simple, comprising only two kinds of storage resource: objects and buckets. Objects store data and metadata, and buckets are containers that can hold an unlimited number of objects. The simplicity of the system means it is very flexible and easily adapted to suit a range of purposes, but it also means that if you need to perform complex tasks, you may have to create more intelligent programs to make up for the lack of features in the storage model.

In addition to data storage, S3 provides access control mechanisms ...