Amazon S3

Amazon S3 is a highly scalable and fast Internet data-storage system. It provides a query-based interface and is simple to use. There are three fundamental components that comprise S3—buckets, objects, and keys. We are going to discuss each of these here.

Buckets

Buckets are the fundamental building blocks in S3. Each object stored in S3 is contained within a bucket. A bucket is quite similar to a directory on the filesystem. The key advantage of an S3 bucket is that the bucket and its contents are addressable using a URL. For example, if you have a bucket named songs, with a file mysong.mp3, it can be addressed using the URL http://songs.s3.amazonaws.com/mysong.mp3.

Each S3 account can contain a maximum of 100 buckets. You can ensure the bucket is situated in a certain geographic location by specifying it at the time the bucket is created. Currently S3 is available in two different regions—the United States and the European Union. Amazon has recently announced that they are expanding...