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Object Storage Fundamentals in Cloud Computing

Learn about Object Storage Fundamentals in this comprehensive Cloud Computing tutorial. Why the world moved away from hard drives for web assets.

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1The Paradigm Shift

Before S3, if you built a photo-sharing app, you had to attach huge hard drives (Block Storage) to your web servers. When the drives filled up, the site went down. S3 decoupled storage from compute. Your web servers handle logic, and S3 handles infinite storage via API calls.

2The Illusion of Folders

When you use the AWS Console, you see folders. This is an illusion created by the UI. In reality, an object named docs/2026/report.pdf is just a single string key. This flat namespace allows S3 to scale to trillions of objects without the bottleneck of a file system directory index.

3Step-by-Step Breakdown

What is S3?. Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) provides object storage built to store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere.

Buckets. Data in S3 is stored in containers called 'Buckets'. A bucket is the root-level folder for your objects.

Global Uniqueness. Bucket names must be globally unique across ALL of AWS, not just your account.

Objects. Files stored in a bucket are called 'Objects'. An object consists of the data itself and metadata (key-value pairs describing the data).

Keys (Not Directories). S3 has a flat structure. There are no real directories. The 'Key' is simply the full path to the object.

Structure Check. Does S3 use a traditional hierarchical file system (like your laptop's hard drive)?

→Yes, it uses real folders
→No, it's a flat structure using key prefixes
→Only if you format it first

Object Size Limits. You can store virtually unlimited objects in a bucket. The maximum size for a single object is 5 Terabytes (TB).

Durability. S3 Standard offers 99.999999999% (11 9s) of durability by redundantly storing objects across multiple facilities.

Accessing Data. Objects are accessed via REST APIs, SDKs, or standard HTTP/HTTPS URLs (if public).

Completion. You can now store infinite data in the cloud.

Pascual Vila

Frontend Instructor // Code Syllabus

Common Pitfalls & Errors

The Error //

Assuming bucket names are private or namespaced per account

// Bucket names are global — this will fail if anyone, anywhere, already owns it:
aws s3 mb s3://acme-corp-backups

The Solution //

S3 bucket names are globally unique across all AWS accounts, and a guessable name (like a company name plus '-backups') can be found and probed by anyone. Choose non-obvious bucket names and never assume obscurity alone protects a bucket's contents.

The Error //

Making a bucket public to quickly test something, then forgetting to revert it

aws s3api put-public-access-block --bucket my-bucket \
  --public-access-block-configuration BlockPublicAcls=true,IgnorePublicAcls=true,BlockPublicPolicy=true,RestrictPublicBuckets=true

The Solution //

A bucket or object made public 'just for a quick test' is a common source of real data leaks when the change is never reverted. Use S3 Block Public Access at the account or bucket level as a safety net, and use presigned URLs for temporary access instead of making anything public.