Storage technology explained: What is S3 and what is it good for? | Computer Weekly
Summary
While it’s hard to get a definitive figure, the most recent AWS (Amazon Web Services) estimates of the number of S3 objects stored approach half a quadrillion – it reached a trillion in 2010 – and volume-wise that’s many exabytes of data. So, here we give an overview of S3; what it is, how it works, what classes of storage it provides, the use cases it is good for, and the on-prem options spawned by the ascension of S3 to de facto standard status. It has also become a de facto standard, with S3-based products available in object storage from vendors that target customer’s on-site deployments. S3 data also has metadata, of which some is system-generated and comprises object management-related variables such as datestamps, service levels, size, content type, encryption, versioning, zone, and upload information. S3 storage is based around core HTTP methods or verbs that include GET, PUT, DELETE etc., and accessed via the AWS browser GUI, the command line, and via API.