AWS › S3 & Storage

What is Amazon S3 and what makes it well suited for storing virtually unlimited amounts of data?

Beginner

Answer

Amazon S3, or Simple Storage Service, is an object storage service that lets you store and retrieve virtually unlimited amounts of data, such as files, images, videos, and backups, offering extremely high durability by automatically storing multiple copies of your data across multiple Availability Zones, along with a simple API that makes it easy to integrate with countless other AWS services and applications.
aws s3 cp myfile.txt s3://my-bucket/myfile.txt
Real-world example A company stores millions of customer uploaded documents in S3, relying on its virtually unlimited scalability and high durability rather than needing to plan and provision their own storage hardware capacity in advance.

Common follow-ups: What is the difference between object storage and traditional file or block storage?;How durable is data stored in S3 according to AWS's published durability guarantee?