This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Sumbul Naqvi
There are two main members/types of storage in AWS Storage family, Uncle (block) and Aunty (object). Who storage information depending upon their nature and temperament. And you need to keep their nature in mind while trying to retrieve information from them. đ
 If you give any information (say 1GB) to uncle/block, he is easy to go guy. What happens is that this file is split into fixed size chunks of data and then stored.Â
Aunty/Object storage, on the other hand, treats each file like a single unit of data. This might seem like a small difference, but it can change how you access and work with your data.
Let's say I want to change one character out of that 1GB file. If my file is stored in block storage, changing that one character is simple, mainly because we can change the block, or the piece of the file that the character is in, and leave the rest of the file alone. Uncle is carefree đ
 Whereas, in object storage, if I want to change that one character, I instead have to update the entire file. Aunty mentality you know everything is treated as an object. Hundreds of questions asked and change is not easy. đ
Therefore for our static data, like the employee photos, will most likely be accessed often, but modified rarely, storing in object storage is fine.Â
For more frequently updated data or data that has high transaction rates, like our application or system files, block storage will perform better.
Jokes apart, I will be giving a detailed view of different concepts related to Storage, with respect to AWS as I move forward using my standard way of asking and answering.
Lets try understanding the Storage Solutions given by AWS by asking and answering few questions:
Que 1- How to choose the right storage service for your needs?
Ans- It depends upon What we want to store, How we want to store and How often we want it to access it.
Que 2- Into how many categories, AWS storage services can be grouped?
Ans- AWS storage services are grouped into three categories: file storage, block storage, and object storage.Â
 In file storage (EFS), data is stored as files in a hierarchy. In block storage (EBS), data is stored in fixed-size blocks. And in object storage (S3), data is stored as objects in buckets.
Que 3-âWhat is the main difference between file storage and object storage?
Ans- In object storage, files are stored as objects. Objects, much like files, are treated as a single, distinct unit of data when stored. However, unlike file storage, these objects are stored in a bucket using a flat structure, meaning there are no folders, directories, or complex hierarchies. Each object contains a unique identifier. This identifier, along with any additional metadata, is bundled with the data and stored.
Que 4- Explain Amazon Elastic File System.
Ans- Amazon Elastic File System(Amazon EFS) is file system that automatically grows and shrinks as you add and remove files. There is no need for provisioning or managing storage capacity and performance. Amazon EFS can be used with any number of AWS compute services and on-premises resources. Amazon EFS can provide consistent performance to each compute instance. EFS works with EC2 instances in multi-AZ.
It is managed service, designed to provide serverless, fully elastic file storage that lets you share file data without provisioning or managing storage capacity and performance. It is the only cloud-native shared file system with fully automatic lifecycle management.
Que 5- When should I use Amazon EFS vs. Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) vs. Amazon S3?
Ans-
 EFS is a file storage service for use with Amazon compute (EC2, containers, serverless) and on-premises servers. EFS provides a file system interface, file system access semantics (such as strong consistency and file locking), and concurrently accessible storage for up to thousands of EC2 instances.
Amazon EBS is a block-level storage service for use with EC2. EBS can deliver performance for workloads that require the lowest-latency access to data from a single EC2 instance.
Amazon S3 is an object storage service. S3 makes data available through an internet API that can be accessed anywhere.
 Note: Unlike Amazon EBS, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is a standalone storage solution that isn't tied to compute.
Que 6-âHow does pricing works in Amazon S3?
Ans- As far as S3 pricing is concerned, you pay for all bandwidth into and out of Amazon S3, except for the following:
 ⢠Data transferred out to the internet for the first 100GB per month, aggregated across all AWS Services and Regions (except China and GovCloud)
 ⢠Data transferred in from the internet.
 ⢠Data transferred between S3 buckets in the same AWS Region.Â
 ⢠Data transferred from an Amazon S3 bucket to any AWS service(s) within the same AWS Region as the S3 bucket (including to a different account in the same AWS Region).
 ⢠Data transferred out to Amazon CloudFront (CloudFront).
Que 7- Compare the cost between the basic storage option available.
Ans-
Que 8- What the the few performance parameters with respect to storage?
Ans-
Que 9- Explain Availability and Durability with respect to storage?
Ans- Durability refers to how safe data is from being lost, while data availability refers to how often you can access your stored data.
Que 10- Few use cases of above?
Ans- Few use cases of EBS, S3 and EFS are following:
Que 11- What makes AWS S3 most sort after choice for storage?
Ans- Some of the benefits of AWS S3 are:
Durability: S3 provides 99.999999999 percent durability.
Low cost: S3 lets you store data in a range of "storage classes." These classes are based on the frequency and immediacy you require in accessing files.
Scalability: S3 charges you only for what resources you actually use, and there are no hidden fees or overage charges. You can scale your storage resources to easily meet your organization's ever-changing demands.
Availability: S3 offers 99.99 percent availability of objects
Security: S3 offers an impressive range of access management tools and encryption features that provide top-notch security.
Flexibility: S3 is ideal for a wide range of uses like data storage, data backup, software delivery, data archiving, disaster recovery, website hosting, mobile applications, IoT devices, and much more.
Simple data transfer: You don't have to be an IT genius to execute data transfers on S3. The service revolves around simplicity and ease of use.
Que 12-âDifferentiate between AWS Buckets vs Objects?
Ans- An object consists of data, key (assigned name), and metadata. A bucket is used to store objects. When data is added to a bucket, Amazon S3 creates a unique version ID and allocates it to the object.
Que 13-âWhat are the different storage classes offered by Amazon S3?
Ans- Amazon S3 offers a range of storage classes designed for different use cases:
S3 Standard for general-purpose storage of frequently accessed data
S3 Intelligent-Tiering for data with unknown or changing access patterns
S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) and S*3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA)* for long-lived, but less frequently accessed data
S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval for long-lived data that is rarely accessed and requires retrieval in milliseconds.
S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval (Formerly S3 Glacier) for archive data that is accessed 1â2 times per year and is retrieved asynchronously.
S3 Glacier Deep Archive (S3 Glacier Deep Archive) for long-term archive and digital preservation.
One Zone-IA Storage Class: It can be used where the data is infrequently accessed and stored in a single region.
Que 14-âWhat is an Amazon EFS Access Point?
Ans- An EFS Access Point is a network endpoint that users and applications can use to access an EFS file system and enforce file- and folder- level permissions (POSIX) based on fine-grained access control and policy-based permissions defined in IAM.
 When you create an Amazon EFS Access Point, you can configure an operating system user and group, and a root directory for all connections that use it.
Que 15-âWhat is Amazons solution for windows ?
Ans-âAmazon FSx is a fully managed service that offers reliability, security, scalability, and a broad set of capabilities that make it convenient and cost effective to launch, run, and scale high-performance file systems in the cloud.Â
With Amazon FSx, you can choose between four widely used file systems: Lustre, NetApp ONTAP, OpenZFS, and Windows File Server. You can choose based on your familiarity with a file system or based on your workload requirements for feature sets, performance profiles, and data management capabilities.
Que 16- Briefly explain the services in the Amazon FSx data storage family.
Ans- Amazon FSx data storage family come in four options that align to popular file systems:
¡ Amazon FSx for Windows File Server provides fully managed Microsoft Windows file servers, backed by a fully native Windows file system.
¡ Amazon FSx for Lustre allows you to launch and run the high-performance Lustre file system.
¡ Amazon FSx for OpenZFS a fully managed file storage service that enables you to move data to AWS from on-premises ZFS or other Linux-based file servers.
¡ Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP a fully managed service that provides highly reliable, scalable, high-performing, and feature-rich file storage built on NetApp's popular ONTAP file system.
Que 17-âWhat are AWS Storage Gateway ?
Ans- AWS Storage Gateway is like a bridge between on-premises data and cloud data.
 Basically Storage Gateway is of following types:
 ⢠S3 File GatewayÂ
 ⢠FSx File GatewayÂ
 ⢠Volume GatewayÂ
 ⢠Tape Gateway
Que 18- What is Amazon EC2 instance store ?
Ans- Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance store provides temporary block-level storage for an instance. This storage is located on disks that are physically attached to the host computer. This ties the lifecycle of the data to the lifecycle of the EC2 instance. If you delete the instance, the instance store is also deleted. Because of this, instance store is considered ephemeral block storage. This is preconfigured storage that exists on the same physical server that hosts the EC2 instance and cannot be detached from Amazon EC2. You can think of it as a built-in drive or RAM for your EC2 instance.
Que 19-âWhat is difference between EBS and instance store?
Ans- We use the instance store for temporary storage. Data that's stored in instance store volumes isn't persistent through instance stops, terminations, or hardware failures. For data that you want to retain longer, or if you want to encrypt the data, use Amazon EBS volumes instead.
 Thus, we can say , EBS is like HD and instance store are like RAM of our system.
Que 20- How much data can I store in Amazon S3?
Ans- The total volume of data and number of objects you can store in Amazon S3 are unlimited. Individual Amazon S3 objects can range in size from a minimum of 0 bytes to a maximum of 5 TB. The largest object that can be uploaded in a single PUT is 5 GB. For objects larger than 100 MB, customers should consider using the multipart upload capability.
Que 21- What is S3 Transfer Acceleration?
Ans- Transfer Acceleration is designed for specific use cases, to optimize transfer speed from across the world into S3 buckets. Transfer Acceleration takes advantage of the globally distributed edge locations in Amazon CloudFront. As the data arrives at an edge location, the data is routed to Amazon S3 over an optimized network path. We enable transfer accelartion at bucket level. It this, creates fast, easy, and secure transfers of files over long distances between your client and your Amazon S3 bucket.
Que 22- What is the difference between AWS Global Accelerator and S3 transfer Acceleration?
Ans-âS3 Transfer Acceleration helps speed up long-distance object transfers between S3 buckets, while Global Accelerator helps manage traffic across multiple AWS regions. AWS Global Accelerator is a networking service that helps you improve the availability, performance, and security of your public applications.
Que 23- What are S3 lifecycle policies?Â
Ans- Lifecycle policies help manage and automate the life of your objects within S3, preventing you from leaving data unnecessarily available. They make it possible to select cheaper storage options if your data needs to be retained, while at the same time, adopting additional security control from Glacier.
Que 24- What is multipart upload in S3?
Ans- Multipart upload allows you to upload a single object as a set of parts. Each part is a contiguous portion of the object's data. You can upload these object parts independently and in any order.
This is useful if you have files larger than 5GB, which is currently the maximum size for a single PUT operation in S3. Multipart uploads also offer enhanced throughput and the ability to stop and resume uploads if there are any network issues.
Que 25- What is difference between AWS Global Accelerator and CloudFront?
Ans- CloudFront uses Edge Locations to cache content while Global Accelerator uses Edge Locations to find an optimal pathway to the nearest regional endpoint. CloudFront is designed to handle HTTP protocol meanwhile Global Accelerator is best used for both HTTP and non-HTTP protocols such as TCP and UDP.
Que 26-âExplain the concept of Data Sync?
Ans- Data Sync is used to move large amount of data to and from :
 ⢠On-premises / other cloud to AWS (NFS, SMB, HDFS, S3 APIâŚ)â-âneeds agent.
 ⢠AWS to AWS (different storage services)â-âno agent neededÂ
 The task of replication tasks can be scheduled hourly, daily, weekly. And file permissions and metadata are preserved (NFS POSIX, SMBâŚ) One agent task can use 10 Gbps, can setup a bandwidth limit.
Que 27- What is the snow family in AWS?
Ans- The AWS Snow Family is a service that helps customers who need to run operations in austere, non-data center environments, and in locations where there's no consistent network connectivity.
 The Snow Family (comprised of AWS Snowcone, Snowball, and AWS Snowmobile) oďŹers a number of physical devices and capacity profiles, most with built-in computing capabilities.
Que 28- How do I choose between Snow Family and other AWS data migration services?
Ans- When there are no network capacity restrictions, the services offered by AWS Storage Gateway and AWS Direct Connect are appropriate choices. Whether linked to a network or not, the Snow Family of Services offers suitable options for the most effective data transfer methods. To assist you in moving data via networks, highways, and technological partners, AWS provides a variety of solutions.
Summary
Hope, this article helps in adding to your knowledge and understanding of AWS storage.
Thanks,
Sumbul
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Sumbul Naqvi
Sumbul Naqvi | Sciencx (2025-10-04T08:35:52+00:00) Story of AWS Storage – Understanding by asking and answering!. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/10/04/story-of-aws-storage-understanding-by-asking-and-answering/
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