Summary

S3 is the primary storage service in AWS. Although S3 integrates with all other AWS services, it enjoys an especially close relationship with S3 Glacier and the AWS compute services: EC2, and Lambda.

For durable, highly available cloud storage, use S3. You can use bucket policies to make your files as private or as public as you want. If you need long-term storage of infrequently accessed data at a lower cost, S3 Glacier is your best bet.

When it comes to local storage, AWS Storage Gateway lets you access your data by going through a virtual machine that automatically synchronizes your data with S3.

For getting your files to or from S3, most often you’ll just transfer your files over the internet, a virtual private network (VPN), or Direct Connect link. But for large amounts of data this is impractical, and a hardware solution makes more sense. Snowball is a rugged, tamper-resistant device that AWS ships to you. You drop your files onto it, send it back, and AWS transfers...