Simple Storage Service (S3)
To access the Simple Storage Service (S3), select the Amazon S3 tab at the top of the AWS Console.
S3 was one of the first services provided by Amazon and is arguably the largest. S3 is at its core an object store, or in other words, a place to store things. It is not, however, a file system. You cannot access things in S3 as you would in a normal file system; instead AWS provides an API to access data stored in S3. This is one of its key strengths, but also one of its key weaknesses.
It is a strength that S3 provides an API, as other third-party providers can write applications that access this API; however, the weakness is that, by default, getting access to S3 is a multi-step process.
Some things to remember for S3 are:
It is not a file system and cannot be accessed like one.
It is slow compared to a normal file system.
It can, however, handle large amounts of data.
S3 can only be accessed through its API or a third-party product that uses this API.
It is a very cost...