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AWS Storage Services

Abiodun Eniola's photo
Abiodun Eniola
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4 min read

Data storage is an essential part of a business, and it is important to seek reliable data solutions as the increase in business growth.

Let's look at Amazon Web Services(AWS), a global leading cloud services provider which offers a wide variety of storage services to meet business needs.

In this article we will be looking at the storage services in AWS.

Types of storage:

  • Object Storage: This is best for storing large amount of unstructured data.

    It manages data as Objects. Data can be accessed via a user interface or API. E.g. is Amazon S3

  • Block Storage: It stores and manage large volume of structured data. It can be accessed in different operating system E.g Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)

  • File Storage: Data is manages as files in a hierarchical manner. This is best for applications that access and share files collaboratively, like content management systems. E.g Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)

  1. Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3): This is a simple storage service in AWS that stores files of different types like photos, audios, and videos as objects. It is the most popular and widely used storage service.

    Features:

    It is a highly scalable and durable secured storage service that can store a high amount of data of single put of 5GB.

    S3 is a cost effective service that allows a pay-as-you-go pricing model whereby users only pay for what they use.

    Storage classes: Each of the storage classes are based on specific use cases

    • Standard

  • Intelligent-Tiering

  • Standard-Infrequent Access (Standard-IA)

  • One Zone-Infrequent Access (One Zone-IA)

  • Glacier

  1. Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS): This offers scalable, reliable and high-performance block storage for EC2 instances.

    Features:

    EBS volumes are optimized for low-latency performance, this makes them ideal for applications such as databases, analytics, and high-performance computing.

    They are replicated in availability zones (AZ) to ensure availability in case of hardware failure, they are restored automatically to minimize data loss.

    EBS allows user to encrypt their data using the AWS key management services (KMS) in order to meet compliance and security requirements.

    It also provides convenient way to back up data by creating copies of their data for disaster recovery or data migration.

  2. Amazon Elastic File System (EFS): This is a fully managed file storage service that is designed to provide scalability, elasticity, and highly availability for use with AWS cloud services

    Features:

    It is a file system that can be used with EC2 instances and on-premises servers. It provides a simple and scalable file system for use with EC2 instances and on-premises servers. It also supports the Network File System (NFSv4) protocol and allows storage capacity to be scaled up or down based on demands.

  3. Amazon Snow Family:

    This is built to transport terabytes or petabytes of data to and from AWS, or customers who want to run application or access the compute power of the AWS in locations where internet connectivity is not reliable or might not be an option.

    There are 3 Snow family members for migrating data to AWS securely and cheaply.

    • Snowcone: This is a secure, portable device offering edge computing and integrates lightly with AWS compute and storage services. It is the smallest AWS snow family member.

    • Snowball: This uses secure devices to transfer petabyte-scale data of data into and out of the AWS Cloud. This tackles the challenges that are faced when dealing with large-scale data transfers including extreme network expenses, long transfer duration, and security issues.

    • Snowmobile: This is a 45-foot-long shipping container that is pulled by a semi-trailer truck. It allows you to move massive volumes of data to the cloud, or even a complete migration of data centre. Transferring data with Snowmobile is secure, fast and cost-effective.

  1. Amazon Storage Gateway: This is a hybrid cloud storage service that allows you on-premises access to virtually unlimited cloud storage. It connects on-premises environments with cloud storage through cached volumes, stored volumes and tape-based backup.

    Features

    It can scales easily hence allowing organization to expand their storage needs without service disruptions.

    It is a cost effective cloud storage services as it enables organization reduce their expenditure by using the pay-as-you-go pricing mode

    The security and integrity of the data are ensured by using some in-built features such as snapshots, encryption etc..

    It also provides 3 types of storage gateways:

    • File Gateway (file-based access)

    • Volume Gateway (block storage volumes)

    • Tape Gateway (virtual tape libraries).

In conclusion, AWS offers an array of cloud storage services and leveraging on AWS storage services can help businesses achieve more security, durability, scalability and cost effectiveness.

AWSstorageS3