From S3 to Snow Family: A Beginner's Guide to Navigating the Array of AWS Storage Offerings
Tags: aws, cloudstorage
Published: 2023-07-06 04:33:15

### _Types of Storage Offered By Amazon Web Services_
1. _**Simple Storage Service (S3)**_
2. **_Elastics File System (EFS)_**
3. _**Elastic Block Store (EBS)**_
4. **_Amazon FSx for Lustre_**
5. **_Amazon Snow Family_**

_**Simple Storage Service (S3)**_

AWS S3, also known as Amazon Simple Storage Service, is a highly scalable, secure, and durable cloud storage service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It is designed to store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere on the web, making it an ideal solution for various use cases such as backup and restore, data archiving, content distribution, and data lakes.

S3 offers a simple and intuitive web-based interface, allowing users to create and manage "buckets" (containers for storing objects) and upload/download files or objects within those buckets. Each object in S3 can range in size from a few bytes to terabytes, and there is virtually no limit to the total amount of data that can be stored in S3.


![Types of S3 Storage](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/evpys59zmngb0m109c6r.png)

Here are the different types of storage classes available in Amazon S3:

_Standard:_ This is the default storage class for frequently accessed data. It offers high durability, availability, and low latency, making it suitable for frequently accessed data or real-time applications.

_Intelligent-Tiering:_ This storage class is designed for data with unknown or changing access patterns. It automatically moves objects between two access tiers (frequent and infrequent) based on their access patterns, optimizing costs without any performance impact.

_Standard-IA (Infrequent Access):_ Standard-IA is ideal for data that is accessed less frequently but requires rapid access when needed. It offers lower storage costs compared to the Standard class but slightly higher retrieval costs.

_One Zone-IA:_ This storage class is similar to Standard-IA but stores data in a single availability zone instead of multiple zones. It provides cost savings but with slightly reduced durability compared to other classes that store data across multiple availability zones.

_Glacier:_ Glacier is designed for long-term data archival with retrieval times ranging from minutes to hours. It offers the lowest storage costs but with longer retrieval times.

_Glacier Deep Archive:_ This is the most cost-effective storage class for archiving data that is rarely accessed. Retrieval times can range from hours to days, but it provides the lowest storage costs among all the storage classes.

**_Elastics File System (EFS)_**

AWS EFS (Amazon Elastic File System) is a fully managed and scalable cloud-based file storage service offered by Amazon Web Services. It provides shared access to files from multiple EC2 instances, making it an ideal solution for various file-based workloads such as content management, web serving, data analytics, and container storage.

EFS offers a compatible file system interface with standard file protocols like NFSv4. It enables the creation of file systems that can be concurrently accessed from multiple EC2 instances, facilitating collaboration and data sharing among applications and instances.

There are two performance modes available in AWS EFS:


![Types of EFS Storage](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/pv5pm6mgk9lonnd608in.png)

AWS EFS automatically scales its storage capacity and throughput as the file system grows, ensuring that applications have the necessary resources to handle the workload efficiently.

_**Elastic Block Store (EBS)**_

Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) is a scalable block storage service by AWS. It provides durable and persistent storage for Amazon EC2 instances. Key features include elasticity, performance options, durability, snapshots, and encryption.

Types of Amazon EBS volumes offered by AWS:

_General Purpose (SSD):_ Balanced price and performance for a wide range of workloads.
    
_Provisioned IOPS (SSD):_ High-performance SSD volumes designed for I/O-intensive workloads.
    
_Throughput Optimized (HDD):_ Low-cost HDD volumes optimized for frequently accessed, throughput-intensive workloads.
    
_Cold HDD:_ Lowest cost HDD volumes designed for less frequently accessed workloads.
    
_io2 (SSD):_ Highest-performance SSD volumes with higher durability and provisioned IOPS capabilities.
    
_io2 Block Express (SSD):_ Ultra-high-performance SSD volumes with sub-millisecond latency and up to 256K IOPS.


![Types of EBS Storage](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/w4yftuaoghtl18epi6pn.png)

**_Amazon FSx for Lustre_**
AWS Lustre is a high-performance file system provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that is designed for applications that require fast data processing and storage. It is particularly well-suited for workloads that involve large-scale analytics, high-performance computing (HPC), and data-intensive processing.

AWS Lustre is built on the open-source Lustre file system, which is known for its scalability, performance, and parallel access capabilities. It allows users to store and process vast amounts of data in parallel, enabling faster analysis and computation.

There are two types of AWS Lustre file systems available:

_Amazon FSx for Lustre_: This is a fully managed file system service offered by AWS. Amazon FSx for Lustre provides a scalable and high-performance file system for compute-intensive workloads. It is designed to deliver sub-millisecond latencies and throughput in the range of hundreds of gigabytes per second. With Amazon FSx for Lustre, you can easily provision and scale file systems on-demand, without the need to manage the underlying infrastructure. It integrates seamlessly with other AWS services and supports integration with on-premises environments.

_Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) with Amazon EC2 instances:_ EFA is a network interface card (NIC) that provides high-performance network capabilities for Amazon EC2 instances. When used in conjunction with Lustre file systems, EFA enables low-latency and high-throughput communication between instances, which is crucial for distributed and parallel computing workloads. This type of deployment requires manually setting up and configuring the Lustre file system on EC2 instances using the Lustre software stack.

Both types of AWS Lustre file systems provide high-performance, parallel file access, and are suitable for different types of workloads. Amazon FSx for Lustre is a managed service that simplifies deployment and management, while the EFA with EC2 instances option offers more flexibility and control over the Lustre environment but requires additional configuration and management effort.

**_Amazon Snow Family_**
The AWS Snow family is a set of physical devices designed to facilitate the transfer of large amounts of data between on-premises environments and the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. These devices are designed to address the challenges of moving large volumes of data over long distances or in scenarios where internet connectivity is limited or unreliable.


![AWS Snow Family](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/gdvcm2gwd9298z5791x4.png)

There are three main devices within the AWS Snow family:

_AWS Snowcone:_ Snowcone is the smallest and most portable device in the Snow family. It is rugged and compact, about the size of a hardcover book. Snowcone has 8 terabytes (TB) of usable storage capacity and is intended for use cases such as edge computing, content distribution, or data migration in remote or disconnected environments.

_AWS Snowball:_ Snowball is a larger and more powerful device compared to Snowcone. It comes in two options: the original Snowball and Snowball Edge. The original Snowball device offers up to 80 TB of storage capacity, while Snowball Edge provides more storage capacity (up to 100 TB) and also includes compute capabilities. Snowball devices are typically used for large-scale data migration, offline data transfer, and performing compute tasks in edge locations.

_AWS Snowmobile:_ Snowmobile is the largest device in the Snow family and is used for massive data transfers. It is a rugged shipping container that can transport up to 100 petabytes (PB) of data. Snowmobile is often used when organizations need to migrate extremely large datasets, such as video libraries or large-scale data lakes, to the AWS cloud.


![Snow Devices Comparison](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/8trige1dfmgmw2p730rn.png)