Storing data at scale can be a challenge for even the most advanced storage systems. Not only does it become quite difficult and expensive to store massive amounts of data, it can also become a hassle finding the right type of data storage solution for the right type of data. Imagine if there was a service that could overcome the limitations of typical filesystems when storing millions or even billions of files, that was unlimited in scale, allowed the data to be accessible via a standard protocol to anyone on the internet, and was cheap to use. There is one, the Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).

The following topics will be covered in this chapter:

• Overview of Amazon S3 and Glacier
• S3 storage classes
• S3 bucket restrictions and limitations
• S3 performance recommendations
• Amazon S3 and Glacier use cases
• Working with S3