Back to Lessons

Amazon S3 Object Storage

April 5, 2026

Amazon S3 Architecture

99.999999999% durability object storage at any scale.

S3 Storage Classes

Standard        - Frequent access (100% avail)
Infrequent Access - 30+ days infrequent (99.9%)
One Zone-IA     - Single AZ (20% cheaper)
Intelligent-Tiering - Auto tiering
Glacier Instant - Millisecond access
Glacier Flex    - Expedited/standard retrieval
Glacier Deep    - 12hr retrieval, cheapest
Outposts        - On-premises

S3 Security

  • Bucket policies (JSON resource policies)
  • IAM policies (identity policies)
  • Bucket ACLs (legacy)
  • Block Public Access (account/bucket)
  • S3 Access Points (delegated access)
  • VPC endpoints (private access)