S3(Simple Storage Service) - AWS Services in Plain English

What is S3 (Simple Storage Service):

You can store objects using this service and can get those objects back. You can think objects as files. These objects could be flat files, audio file, video files, backup data or any file/object. AWS uses a term 'Bucket' in S3 service. You can think of 'Bucket' as a folder. You can place multiple objects inside a bucket. These objects would be stored at multiple availability zones and would offer 99.99% availability and 99.999999999% (11 9's) durability.

What can you do with S3?

You can store your database backups in S3. You can take snapshot of your EC2 and the snapshots would be stored in S3. You can even host a static website using S3. Many of other AWS services use S3 extensively.

What you can't do with S3?

S3 is a service for storing objects. So, you'll NOT be able to install operating system.

Where are these objects stored?

As with most of the AWS service, when creating a 'bucket', you can specify the region at which your objects would be stored. There are multiple regions available at AWS.

What should be the size of the File?

The file size could range from 0 bytes to 5TB.

How about security ?

All objects are blocked for public by default. You have to explicitly give access so that the indented users can access those files. Even you can make your bucket public so that all the objects in that bucket would be accessible by everyone.