Amazon Web Services (AWS) : S3

1. What is AWS S3?

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) provides object storage, which is designed for storing and recovering an arbitrary amount of information or data from anywhere over the internet. This storage is provided through a web services interface. It offers 99.999999999% durability and 99.99% availability of objects. It can also store computer files up to 5 terabytes in size.

2. What are the benefits of AWS Simple Storage Service?

• Durability: It gives 99.999999999 percent SLA.
• Cheaper: It supports a variety of storage classes. They range from those files that need to be accessed more frequently, like caching, to files that rarely change, like snapshots.
• Scalability: Storage resources can be easily scaled up or down based on your organization’s needs.
• Availability: The availability of objects on S3 is 99.99 percent
• Security: It offers a robust suite of tools for access management and encryption that provide enhanced security.
• Flexibility: The Simple Storage Service is perfect for a wide range of uses, including data storage, backups, software delivery, archiving, disaster recovery, hosting websites, mobile applications, IoT devices, and much more.

3. What is the use of AWS S3?

S3 is Amazon’s object storage service. Using Amazon Simple Storage Service, we can store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere on the internet at any time.

4. What is an Object in AWS S3?

The Amazon S3 object store lets you store any number of objects using unique keys. The objects can be stored in one or more buckets, and each bucket can hold up to 5 TB of data.

5. What is Key in AWS S3?

Keys are unique identifiers of objects within a bucket. Each bucket has exactly one key. An object is uniquely identified by its bucket, object key, and optionally, version ID (if Simple Storage Service Versioning is enabled for the bucket). As a result, you can think of Amazon Simple Storage Service as a basic mapping between “bucket + key + version” and the actual object.

6. Explain S3 Versioning.

The Amazon S3 Versioning feature allows you to keep multiple variants of the same object in the same bucket. Objects stored in S3 buckets can be preserved, retrieved, and restored with Simple Storage Service Versioning. It is easy to recover from both unintentional user actions and application failures.

7. What is Bucket Policy?

Bucket policies allow you to grant access permissions to objects within your bucket by using AWS IAM policies. A bucket policy can only be associated with the bucket owner. An owner of a bucket can assign permissions to any object in the bucket that is attached to the bucket.

8. What is Access control lists (ACLs) ?

The ACL allows you to grant read-only and write-only access to individual buckets and objects to authorized users. ACLs are attached to buckets and objects as sub-resources. ACLs are an older access control system for defining the which AWS accounts or groups are granted access and the type of access.

9. How large can a Simple Storage Service bucket be?

You can store an unlimited amount of data and objects in an Simple Storage Service bucket. The size of a single Amazon S3 object can range from 0 bytes to 5 terabytes. An object of around 5 GB can be uploaded in a single upload request but Multipart Upload must be enabled.

10. Explain the benefits of S3 versioning.

We can store multiple variants of an object in a bucket by versioning it. An object can be restored to a previous or specific version by versioning. If an object is deleted or accidentally overwritten, versioning can be used to recover it.

11. How to configure S3 Versioning on a Bucket?

Versioning helps you keep multiple versions of an object in one place. Follow these steps to enable versioning on an S3 bucket.

• Login to your AWS account.
• Choose Simple Storage Service service.
• Choose a bucket for which versioning should be enabled.
• Go to the properties tab.
• Select versioning from properties.
• Click on the OK button to enable versioning.

12.  Is Simple Storage Service considered as DFS?

Simple Storage Service is not a distributed file system, but rather a binary object store. It is structured like a filesystem and is often used like one. Each bucket is a new database (meaning, folder), with keys as folder paths and values as binary objects (i.e. files).

13. How to create an S3 bucket?

To create an AWS S3 bucket check our solution blog for the same.

14. Can I Upload Files Using The AWS Console?

Yes, you can use either of two ways to upload files using AWS Console. One way is by clicking on Objects and selecting your bucket, then uploading a file to it. The other way is by navigating through a bucket’s properties. This is useful if you need to include objects that are not visible in your console, such as large audio or video files.

15. What is the command to list objects in Simple Storage Service bucket?

To list all files or objects under a specified directory or prefix, use the aws s3 ls –recursive command on the AWS CLI .

16. What are the Storage Classes available in Amazon S3?

• S3 Standard
• S3 Standard IA
• S3 one zone-infrequent access
• S3 Glacier

17. Which storage class does AWS S3 use by default?

• Standard

18. What are the ways to manage access for Amazon S3 buckets?

• IAM helps manage Users, Groups, and Roles.
• ACL helps manage objects via access control lists.
• S3 Access Points Helps manage data sets using access points specific to each application.
• Bucket policies help in managing resources and permissions.

19. How do I delete an AWS S3 bucket?

• For deleting an AWS Simple Storage Service  bucket, follow these steps:
• Log in to the Amazon Web Services Management Console.
• Select the Simple Storage Service.
• Locate the bucket you wish to delete.
• Press the delete button. AWS will ask you to type the bucket name you wish to delete.
• Enter the bucket name and click Confirm.

20. What is CloudFront in Amazon S3?

CloudFront is a content delivery web service. CloudFront provides fast, cost-effective delivery of websites, videos, APIs, images, and applications to users around the world.

21) Why would you mount an s3 bucket to an instance?

You don’t want to. Block storage is not the same as object storage, and there are serious implications to this.

22) What are the features of AWS S3?

AWS S3 Provides you a simple and secure way to store your data. It comes with a set of features that allows you secure access to your data at any time. You can store information in various bucket objects (objects) using Amazon S3 and use the various buckets as needed.

The features of AWS S3 are as follows –

• Storage management and monitoring
• Storage analytics and insights
• Access management and security
• Data processing
• Query in place
• Data transfer

23) Explain the AWS S3 bucket?

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is a simple web service interface that allows huge amount of data storage and retrival from anywhere from the internet.Its provides developers highly scalable, reliable, fast and low cost data storage infrastructure.

24) What is the maximum size of S3 bucket?

In S3 bucket you can store unlimited volume of data and number of objects. A single Amazon S3 objects can be a size of range 0 bytes to 5 terabytes. In single upload request You can put an object of around 5 GB but you must have to enable Multipart Upload capability.

25) How to list objects of a S3 bucket?

use aws s3 ls –recursive command on aws CLI to list all files or objects under the specified directory or prefix

26) Explain the process of mounting S3 to EC2 instance?

Follow the steps given below to mount s3 to the ec2 instance

• Update the system

apt-get update

• Install the dependencies

sudo apt-get install automake autotools-dev fuse g++ git libcurl4-gnutls-dev libfuse-dev libssl-dev libxml2-dev make pkg-config

• Clone s3fs source code from git

git clone https://github.com/s3fs-fuse/s3fs-fuse.git

• Run the below commands to change the source code directory, and compile and install the code.

cd s3fs-fuse

autogen.sh

./configure –prefix=/usr –with-openssl

make

sudo make install

• Run the s3fs command to check where the command is placed

which s3fs

• Get your access key and secret key ready.
• Create a new file in /etc with the name passwd-s3fs and paste your access key and secret key.

touch /etc/passwd-s3fs

vim /etc/passwd-s3fs

Your_accesskey:Your_secretkey

• Change the permission of the file

sudo chmod 640 /etc/passwd-s3fs

• Now create a directory or provide the path of an existing directory and mount S3bucket in it.

mkdir /mys3bucket

s3fs your_bucketname -o use_cache=/tmp -o allow_other -o uid=1001 -o mp_umask=002 -o multireq_max=5 /mys3bucket

27) How to install aws s3 CLI ?

Prerequisite to install AWS CLI.

• Python2 version 2.6.5+ or Python3 version 3.3+
• Windows, Linux, macOS,or Unix

After that, if you are using Unix or Linux system run below command to install AWS CLI

pip install awscli –upgrade –user

For window and other OS please read: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/installing.html

28) How to clear AWS S3 cache?

You can use invalidations to clear AWS S3 cache. To create invalidations login to AWS Console and go to Distribution Settings > Invalidations > Create Invalidation. Once invalidation is created just type path of file or a wildcard to purge the cache.

29) How to delete a AWS S3 bucket?

Here are steps to delete an S3 bucket:-

• Step1: Login to AWS Management Console.
• Step2: Select S3 from services.
• Step3: Check the bucket you want to delete.
• Step4: Click on the delete button. As confirmation Aws ask you to type the bucket name to delete.
• Step5: Type bucket name and click on the Confirm button.

30) How to get AWS S3 access key?

AWS S3 Access keys are TCP connections to an S3 bucket and allow you to get from it, store your data in it and download it. You can create a new access key or update an existing one when you’re creating a new bucket or modifying existing ones.

31) What are options available for protecting data at rest in Amazon S3?

Amazon S3 offers several options for protecting data at rest. For example, you can encrypt or obfuscate Key Pair URIs with X.509 certificates and EC2 instances by using either Linux containers or EC2 instances to transfer the data out of S3.

32) Explain S3 Versioning? What are benefits of using versioning in S3.

Versioning allows us to keep multiple variants of an object in a bucket. Versioning helps us to restore an object to a previous or specific version of an object. You can take advantage of versioning to recover a deleted or mistakenly overwritten object.

33) How to Configure Versioning on a Bucket?

Versioning helps you to keep multiple versions of an object in one bucket. Here are simple steps to enable versioning on an S3 bucket.

• Step1: Login to your AWS console.
• Step2: From services choose S3.
• Step3: Select a bucket for which you want to enable versioning.
• Step4: Click on the properties tab.
• Step5: Choose versioning from properties.
• Step6: Choose to enable versioning and click on the Ok button.

34) How to enable Multipart Upload capability in Amazon S3.

Multipart Upload is a new feature that allows you to add multiple files in a single operation. This means that instead of uploading a file with S3 and having it uploaded to all the destinations separately, you can upload multiple files in one step. Multipart Upload lets you expand your use cases, by having faster downloads and big data transfer, or by making sure that files are always accessible from anywhere and from any device