AWS Storage Services Cheat Sheet

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AWS provides storage services across four categories: Object (S3), Block (EBS), File (EFS, FSx), and Hybrid/Edge (Storage Gateway, Snow Family).

Each is optimized for different access patterns, latency requirements, and cost profiles.

Object Storage

Unlimited object storage with 99.999999999% (11 nines) durability.
Max object size: 5TB; multipart upload for objects >100MB.
Storage Classes:
- S3 Standard – frequently accessed, low latency, high throughput.
- S3 Intelligent-Tiering – automatic cost optimization with access pattern monitoring.
- S3 Standard-IA – infrequent access, lower storage cost, retrieval fee.
- S3 One Zone-IA – single AZ, 20% cheaper than Standard-IA.
- S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval – archive with millisecond access.
- S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval – archive, 1-12 hour retrieval.
- S3 Glacier Deep Archive – lowest cost, 12-48 hour retrieval.
- S3 Express One Zone – single-digit millisecond, single AZ, for analytics.
Lifecycle Policies – automatically transition objects between classes or expire them.

Versioning – keep multiple versions; protect against accidental deletes.
Replication – Cross-Region (CRR) or Same-Region (SRR) replication.
Object Lock – WORM (Write Once Read Many) for compliance (Governance or Compliance mode).
S3 Event Notifications – trigger Lambda, SQS, SNS, EventBridge on object events.
S3 Transfer Acceleration – faster uploads using CloudFront edge locations.

S3 Select / Glacier Select – retrieve subset of data using SQL.
Encryption: SSE-S3 (default), SSE-KMS, SSE-C, client-side.
Access Control: Bucket policies, IAM policies, ACLs (legacy), Access Points, Block Public Access.

Persistent block storage for EC2 instances.
Volume Types:
- gp3 – general purpose SSD, 3,000 IOPS baseline, up to 16,000 IOPS. Cost-effective default.
- gp2 – general purpose SSD, burst up to 3,000 IOPS (legacy, prefer gp3).
- io2 Block Express – highest performance SSD, up to 256,000 IOPS, sub-ms latency. For databases.
- io1 – provisioned IOPS SSD, up to 64,000 IOPS.
- st1 – throughput-optimized HDD, up to 500 MB/s. For big data, data warehouses.
- sc1 – cold HDD, lowest cost, up to 250 MB/s. For infrequent access.
Single AZ – must be in same AZ as EC2 instance.

Snapshots – point-in-time backups to S3 (incremental); can copy cross-region.
Multi-Attach – io2 volumes can attach to up to 16 Nitro instances in same AZ.
Encryption – AES-256 via KMS; encrypt at rest, in transit, and snapshots.

Ephemeral block storage physically attached to host – highest IOPS/throughput.
Data lost on instance stop/terminate/failure.
Use for: temporary buffers, caches, scratch data.

Elastic – grows/shrinks automatically; pay only for what you use.
Performance modes: General Purpose (latency-sensitive) and Max I/O (high parallelism).
Throughput modes: Elastic (auto), Bursting, Provisioned.
Storage classes: Standard, Infrequent Access (IA), Archive – with lifecycle management.

Regional – data stored across multiple AZs; One Zone option available at lower cost.
Supports cross-region replication for DR.

FSx for Windows File Server – managed Windows SMB with Active Directory, DFS, VSS.
FSx for Lustre – high-performance parallel file system (HPC, ML). Integrates with S3.

FSx for NetApp ONTAP – multi-protocol (NFS, SMB, iSCSI) with snapshots, clones, tiering.
FSx for OpenZFS – high-performance NFS with snapshots and data compression.

Automated data transfer – on-premises to AWS (S3, EFS, FSx) or between AWS services.
Up to 10x faster than open-source tools; built-in scheduling, integrity validation.

A company needs to store 500TB of data that is rarely accessed (once per quarter) but must be retrievable within milliseconds. Which storage class is most cost-effective?
1. S3 Standard
2. S3 Standard-IA
3. S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval
4. S3 Glacier Deep Archive
A database requires 100,000 IOPS with sub-millisecond latency on a single EC2 instance. Which EBS volume type should be used?
1. gp3
2. io1
3. io2 Block Express
4. st1
Multiple EC2 instances across AZs need shared access to a POSIX-compliant file system with automatic capacity scaling. Which service fits?
1. EBS Multi-Attach
2. S3
3. EFS
4. FSx for Lustre

A company needs to migrate 50TB of on-premises data to S3, but their internet connection would take 2 weeks. Which service provides faster physical transfer?
1. S3 Transfer Acceleration
2. DataSync
3. Snowball Edge
4. Storage Gateway
An on-premises application uses NFS to access files that must be stored in S3 for durability. Which service provides this transparent NFS-to-S3 bridge?
1. EFS
2. FSx for ONTAP
3. S3 File Gateway
4. DataSync