Storage

Amazon’s most popular storage option is Amazon S3. The S3 stands for simple storage service, and it’s a scalable web-based service for backup and archiving of data.

S3 allows for uploading, storage and downloading, and upon sign-up, new AWS customers receive 5 GB of Amazon S3 standard storage, 20,000 Get Requests, 2,000 Put Requests, and 15GB of data transfer out each month for one year.

Users’ data is stored on servers in multiple data centres, and uses encryption for authentication. There is the option of keeping data private or making it public.

"Amazon S3 provides a simple web-services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, secure, fast, inexpensive infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. The service aims to maximize benefits of scale and to pass those benefits on to developers."

Amazon S3 is designed for 99.99% availability and 99.999999999% durability. These numbers are surely unquantifiable but they look good for Amazon.

S3 "gives you access to the same highly scalable, reliable, and fast infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. You also benefit from pay-as-you-go pricing."

Big Data

Last year, Amazon instigated its push into big data by launching Kineses, a new service for processing massive volumes of steaming data in real-time.

Terabytes of data can be stored and processes per hour from hundreds of thousands of sources. The data can be pulled from social media feeds, location-tracked events and financial transactions.

Amazon said: "With Amazon Kinesis applications, you can build real-time dashboards, capture exceptions and generate alerts, drive recommendations, and make other real-time business or operational decisions. You can also easily send data to a variety of other services such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon DynamoDB, or Amazon Redshift. In a few clicks and a couple of lines of code, you can start building applications which respond to changes in your data stream in seconds, at any scale, while only paying for the resources you use."