In this blog I will go through the Main AWS storage services available. But before I jump into that I want to mention that I have almost one years of real life working experience with AWS and I am also learning AWS for more than a year. So I think I am in a good position to share knowledge on AWS. Alright lets start the main topic .
When it comes to storing files , it is not as simple of a decision. There are all types of storage in AWS with a different use case for each. I'm going to walk through the most commonly used storage services and describe the common use cases for them.
Types of AWS Cloud Storage
There are three different types of classifications of data stores are available :
- Object storage
- File storage
- Block storage.
Object Storage
Object storage is the most cloudy type of storage. Objects or files are stored using a key and the contents of the store can be spread over multiple servers. This enables high availability and durability.Applications developed in the AWS cloud often take advantage of object storage's vast scalability and metadata characteristics. Object storage solutions like Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and are ideal for building modern applications from scratch that require scale and flexibility, and can also be used to import existing data stores for analytics, backup, or archive. Amazon Glacier is also a Object Storage.
File Storage
If you have a file server, or a shared folder, on your network then you're already familiar with file stores. They store files in a folder structure and you can access them through a network.File storage solutions like Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) are ideal for use cases like large content repositories, development environments, media stores, or user home directories.
Block Storage
This type of storage is all about performance. Essentially it just acts like a hard disk connected to whatever is using it. Block-based cloud storage solutions like Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) are provisioned with each virtual server and offer the ultra low latency required for high performance workloads.
What are the main services?
1. Simple Storage Service or S3(Object)
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is an object storage service that offers industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance. S3 is one of the first services created on AWS. It's kinda the default choice for storage in AWS. It's fast, inexpensive, and can store a LOT of data. Unlimited storage space in fact. You can also store objects (files) up to 5 Tb in size!
2. Amazon S3 Glacier & S3 Glacier Deep Archive
Amazon S3 Glacier is a Long-term, secure, durable Amazon S3 object storage class for data archiving. While S3 is fast to access, S3 Glacier is very slow to get your files out of. As the name kind of implies. Getting files from archives out of an S3 Glacier Vault can take between a minute and twelve hours depending on how much you want to pay for it.
3. Instance Store (Block)
Instance store is temporary block-level storage for the Amazon EC2 instances. Anything stored in an instance store gets destroyed when the EC2 instance that it's attached to is terminated. Instance store is ideal for temporary storage of information that changes frequently, such as buffers, caches, scratch data, and other temporary content, or for data that is replicated across a fleet of instances, such as a load-balanced pool of web servers.
4. Elastic Block Store (Block)
Elastic Block Store is another block-storage service designed for use with EC2, but unlike an instance store, its data is persisted when an instance is terminated. Also, you can share an EBS between multiple instances. A broad range of workloads, such as relational and non-relational databases, enterprise applications, containerized applications, big data analytics engines, file systems, and media workflows are widely deployed on Amazon EBS.
5. Amazon EFS (File)
Elastic File System is a service that allows us to store files in S3 as if they were actually on our local network. You attach a VM to your network and it acts as a file server that stores the files in AWS. Amazon EFS is built to scale on demand to petabytes without disrupting applications. With Amazon EFS, you can grow and shrink your file systems automatically as you add and remove files, eliminating the need to provision and manage capacity to accommodate growth.
Use Cases
Of course, there's a reason that all of these different storage services exist. They all have different use cases. Let's look at some of them.
1. Long Term Storage
How do you save some data that won't be accessed regularly? Maybe something that you're required to keep for a few years in case of an audit? Or maybe for government use where criminals data is required to keep for unknown future forensics? That's the exact use case that S3 Glacier was designed for.
2. EC2 Server Caching
If you're running an EC2 instance that needs to cache some data, the instance store is what you're looking for. Since its content lives and dies with the EC2 instance that it's attached to, it's ideal for caches and buffers.
3. Apache Web Server Content
When you have a bunch of instances that all need to have the same data, an EBS may be the way to go. You could store everything in s3 and sync it as part of your bootstrap script, but using an EBS will ensure everything stays synced between server instances.
4. A File Server on Your Network
If you are looking to craete a network file system on your network that connects with AWS cloud then EFS is the one you would go for. EFS is designed to give you the convenience of a local file store, with the durability of cloud storage. Amazon EFS grows and shrinks automatically as you add and remove files, and you only pay for the amount of storage you are using.
Conclusion
So this was all about the different classifications of storage, and AWS's main services for each type and their use cases.
P.S : This is my first ever blog on hashnode, so Please let me know how was it.