Simple Storage Service (or S3) is a data storage solution provided by Amazon.
** S3 services are divided into tiers based upon access frequency needs and pricing.
Data is stored as individual, uniquely-keyed objects (files and file metadata, like modification date) within a container (a bucket) with a user-specified name and based in a particular region. S3 supports versioning of data objects.
Bucket Policies, along with Access Control Lists (ACLs) allow for access permissions to be defined for objects or collections of objects based on set rules (written in/around JSON).
(Note to self– revisit section on S3 data consistency model for AWS’s handling of requests to same buckets from multiple threads)