Storage: S3, EBS, and Archive

Storage: S3, EBS, and Archive

Amazon S3 stores objects in buckets and supports versioning, lifecycle, replication, encryption, and multiple storage classes. Amazon EBS provides block volumes for EC2. S3 Glacier storage classes serve archival access patterns with lower storage cost and retrieval tradeoffs.

Core ideas

• S3 objects are addressed by bucket and key; applications should not treat object storage as a traditional mounted filesystem.
• EBS volumes are Availability Zone resources and commonly persist independently of an EC2 instance.
• Snapshots provide incremental EBS backups and support restore into new volumes.
• Lifecycle policies transition or expire S3 versions based on age and access requirements.

Design and operating model

Classify data by access frequency, retention, recovery point, recovery time, residency, and legal requirements. Enable S3 versioning where rollback matters, block public access by default, use lifecycle automation, and test restore. For EBS, select volume performance from measured IOPS and throughput requirements.

Example

{
  "Rules": [{
    "ID": "archive-logs",
    "Status": "Enabled",
    "Filter": { "Prefix": "logs/" },
    "Transitions": [
      { "Days": 30, "StorageClass": "GLACIER" },
      { "Days": 180, "StorageClass": "DEEP_ARCHIVE" }
    ],
    "Expiration": { "Days": 2555 }
  }]
}

Run examples in a disposable training account and replace Regions, identifiers, policies, resource sizes, and names with reviewed values. Verify commands with the current AWS CLI and service documentation before production use.

Production guidance

• Avoid public buckets and broad bucket policies; use access points or scoped policies where useful.
• Encrypt data, log access, and protect backup copies from the same failure or credential path.
• Archive economics include retrieval requests, restore delay, minimum storage duration, and transfer—not storage price alone.

The chapter quiz follows the lesson and checks both service vocabulary and architecture decisions.