AWS Storage Services Explained: S3, EBS, EFS, Glacier, Snow Family and Storage Gateway

1. Amazon S3: Object Storage

Amazon S3 stands for Simple Storage Service. It is an object storage service used to store and retrieve files.

A few basic concepts from the notes:

• Bucket: like a folder that contains files

• Objects: the actual files stored inside the bucket

• It is used for uploading, downloading, and accessing data

• It is scalable and suitable for storing many kinds of files

S3 is one of the most widely used AWS services because it is simple, durable, and flexible for storing data in the cloud.

2. Amazon EBS: Block Storage

Amazon EBS stands for Elastic Block Storage. It is used with EC2 instances as storage attached to a virtual machine.

Key points:

• EBS is block storage

• It is attached to an EC2 instance

• A root volume usually contains the operating system

• Additional volumes can also be attached for extra storage

• It is useful when you need persistent storage for an instance

Think of EBS as storage that behaves more like a hard disk for your server.

3. Amazon EFS: File Storage

Amazon EFS stands for Elastic File System. It is a file-based storage service.

From the notes:

• It is a file system

• Multiple EC2 instances can access the same file storage

• It is useful when shared storage is needed

• It works well in a distributed environment

EFS is helpful when many servers need to read and write the same files together.

4. AWS Glacier: Archival Storage

AWS Glacier is used for archiving large amounts of data.

It is not meant for frequent access like S3 standard storage. Instead, it is best for data that you want to keep for a long time at low cost.

Use cases include:

• Backup data

• Old records

• Compliance archives

• Long-term storage

If S3 is for active storage, Glacier is for cold storage and archiving.

5. AWS Snow Family: Physical Data Transfer

The Snow Family includes services like Snowcone, Snowball, and Snowmobile.

These are used when you need to transfer large amounts of data physically instead of over the internet.

From the notes:

Snowcone Snowball Snowmobile

These services are useful when:

Internet transfer is too slow Data volume is very large You need to move data securely to AWS

This is AWS’s answer to large-scale offline data transfer.

6. AWS Storage Gateway

AWS Storage Gateway is used to connect on-premises storage with AWS cloud storage.

It helps create a hybrid storage configuration, where part of the data is stored locally and part in the cloud.

This is useful when organizations want:

Local access speed Cloud backup Smooth migration to AWS Hybrid architecture

It acts as a bridge between local infrastructure and AWS storage.

7. Quick Comparison