What is an S3 bucket?

When we talk about cloud hosting, we quickly come across the terms "S3 service" and "bucket", but what exactly do we mean when we talk about S3 storage?

Originally, S3 is a service offered by Amazon AWS and its acronym stands for Simple Storage Service. It is therefore a widely used, easy and very powerful online static file storage service.

Why is the use of this kind of service growing so much?

Advantages

The advantages of a file server "as a service" are:

• Scalability (scalable)
• Billing based on usage (storage + transfer)
• Direct link (public or not) for each file
• API and SDK for simplified access from code or third-party software
• Possibility to host a static website

A bucket is therefore the equivalent of a file server, which you can manipulate easily, and whose technical management is handled by a cloud provider (you only take care of your files, and nothing else).

Providers

Is this a service only available at Amazon AWS?

No, most cloud hosting providers offer a similar feature (without the S3 name, since it's trademarked).

Some even offer an "S3-compatible" service, meaning that the majority of SDKs/libraries available for S3 are compatible with it, simply by pointing them to the right address (host).

This is the case with our friends at Clever-Cloud, who offer an S3-compatible service called Cellar (which, incidentally, hosts the resources for this blog).

Drawbacks

The downside is that using it can be slightly more complex when you're starting out, even for very simple actions.

For example, to navigate through your file hierarchy, not all solutions offer a user interface by default... But don't worry, if you want to browse your S3 bucket, you can use client software like CyberDuck!

If you're not familiar with this software, we have all the explanations available in this article!

A file system?

S3 services are so generic that they can even be mounted as local file systems, in the form of a system partition on Linux/Mac OS...

This is what the s3fs-fuse project offers, and you can find all the information directly on GitHub:

Are you running a Docker image and want to keep a persistent file system accessible directly from the cloud? It's possible with S3FS!

Conclusion

In short, an S3 bucket is a bit like an FTP server that's been given superpowers, and managed in the cloud.

But like any service, it has advantages and disadvantages... Always remember to analyze your project and your needs before deciding to use one technology or another!