S3 what is a bucket

This two-part series will look in-depth at what is an s3 bucket , how AWS handles access rights and permissions, and a new Lightspin Python tool that will provide some visibility and control over securing your public S3 buckets. S3 provides the ability to store, retrieve, access, and back up any amount of data at any time and place. An Object cannot be independent, it must exist within a bucket.

There can be hundreds of buckets in each Amazon account and within each bucket, there can be hundreds of objects. Access to a bucket is granted in the same way as with any other AWS resources — you need an explicit allow and no denies in order to be given access. You add a bucket policy to a bucket to grant other AWS accounts or IAM users access permissions to the bucket and the objects inside it.

Object permissions apply only to the objects that the bucket owner creates. It defines which AWS accounts or groups are granted access.

If it defines access as public, that will allow everyone permissions, whereas if it defines access only to an authenticated user group, this means anyone with an AWS account will have permissions.

It also defines the type of access these users have, such as read or write access. When you create a bucket or an object, Amazon S3 creates a default ACL that grants the resource owner full control over the resource. Amazon provides the ability to define settings for blocking access points, buckets, and accounts to help you to manage public access to Amazon S3 resources.

Netwrix and Stealthbits merge to better secure sensitive data. Already a partner? Visit the partner portal or register a deal below! AWS S3 Basics Amazon leverages a flat, non-hierarchical structure, storing data as objects within buckets. Buckets serve as the containers for objects and provide the mechanisms necessary to control access to them An object is not only the file that is being uploaded but can also include the metadata attributes that describe the file Access points are named network endpoints that are attached to buckets that can be used to perform S3 object operations.

Each access points have distinct permissions and network controls that are applied to any request made through that access point. Bucket Policies provide granular controls to buckets and the objects stored within buckets. Access Control Lists vary from policies in that they can add grant permissions on buckets or on individual objects AWS Identity and Access Management provides additional management of how users can access S3 resources Figure 1: S3 Bucket Objects.

Figure 2: Public Access to S3 Buckets. Farrah Gamboa. Previous Next. Featured Asset. Data Access Governance Buyer's Guide Adopting a Data Access Governance strategy will help any organization achieve stronger security and control over their unstructured data.

Read more. Comment That was a really good article on S3 specially handing security. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Privacy Policy. Start a Free Stealthbits Trial! No risk. No obligation. Login ID. When you upload an object to a bucket, the object gets a unique key.

The key is a string that mimics a directory hierarchy. Once you know the key, you can access the object in the bucket. The bucket name, key, and version ID uniquely identify every object in S3. S3 provides two URL structures you can use to directly access an object:. Amazon has data centers in 24 geographical regions. To reduce network latency and minimize costs, store your data in the region closest to its users. AWS Regions are separated from each other to provide fault tolerance and reliability.

Each region is made up of at least three availability zones, which are separated, independent data centers. Data is replicated across availability zones to protect against outage of equipment in a specific data center, or disasters like fires, hurricanes and floods. Related content: read our guide to object storage deployment. S3 provides storage tiers, also called storage classes, which can be applied at the bucket or object level. S3 also provides lifecycle policies you can use to automatically move objects between tiers, based on rules or thresholds you define.

The S3 Standard-IA tier is for infrequently accessed data. The S3 Standard-IA tier provides:. S3 provides Glacier and Deep Archive, storage classes intended for archived data that is accessed very infrequently. Amazon S3 is an object store. Each object has a unique key that can be used to retrieve it later. You can define any string as a key, and keys can be used to create a hierarchy, for example by including a directory structure in the key.

Another option is to organize objects using metadata, using S3 Object Tagging. Amazon S3 provides 11 nines With regard to availability, S3 guarantees:. It can store up to 1. HyperStore comes with fully redundant power and cooling, and performance features including 1.

HyperStore is an object storage solution you can plug in and start using with no complex deployment.