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3.2 AWS Storage Services

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AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner CLF-C02

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1 Introduction

About the AWS Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) Exam Study Strategies and Exam Tips

2 Domain 1: Cloud Concepts (24%)

1.1 What Is Cloud Computing? 1.2 Cloud Deployment Models 1.3 AWS Well-Architected Framework 1.4 Cloud Migration Strategies 1.5 Cloud Economics

3 Domain 2: Security and Compliance (30%)

2.1 The AWS Shared Responsibility Model 2.2 AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) 2.3 AWS Security Services 2.4 Compliance and Governance 2.5 Network Security

4 Domain 3: Cloud Technology and Services (34%)

3.1 AWS Compute Services 3.2 AWS Storage Services 3.3 AWS Database Services 3.4 AWS Networking and Content Delivery 3.5 Management and Governance Services 3.6 AI/ML and Analytics Services 3.7 Application Integration and Other Services

5 Domain 4: Billing, Pricing, and Support (12%)

4.1 AWS Pricing Models 4.2 Billing and Cost Management Tools 4.3 AWS Support Plans 4.4 Additional Billing Concepts and Services

6 AWS Services Deep Dive

5.1 Compute Services Deep Dive 5.2 Storage and Database Deep Dive 5.3 Security Services Deep Dive 5.4 Architecture Best Practices and Design Principles 5.5 Practice Exam — Mixed Domain Questions

3.2 AWS Storage Services

Key Takeaways Explain This Topic AI

Amazon S3 is object storage with 99.999999999% (11 nines) durability — the most commonly used storage service on AWS.

Amazon EBS provides block storage volumes for EC2 instances — like a virtual hard drive that persists independently of the instance.

Amazon EFS is a fully managed, elastic file system that can be mounted by multiple EC2 instances simultaneously.

S3 storage classes range from Standard (frequent access) to Glacier Deep Archive (rarely accessed, cheapest) — choose based on access frequency.

AWS Storage Gateway connects on-premises environments to cloud storage for hybrid workloads.

Last updated: June 2026

Quick Answer: AWS has three storage shapes — object (Amazon S3), block (Amazon EBS), and file (Amazon EFS / Amazon FSx). The CLF-C02 tests which one fits a scenario: S3 for internet-scale object data, EBS for an EC2 boot/data disk, and EFS for a shared file system mounted by many instances at once.

The Three Types of Cloud Storage

  • Type Description AWS Service Analogy
  • Object Storage Flat namespace; files stored as objects with metadata Amazon S3 A vast labeled filing system
  • Block Storage Fixed-size blocks, like a raw virtual hard drive Amazon EBS A disk attached to your computer
  • File Storage Hierarchical directories and files Amazon EFS, FSx A network shared drive
  • Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)

Amazon S3 stores and retrieves any amount of object data from anywhere. Data lives in buckets (containers) as objects (the file plus metadata). It is one of the most heavily tested services on the exam.

  • S3 Key Features
  • Durability: 99.999999999% ( 11 nines ) — designed to survive the simultaneous loss of two facilities
  • Availability: 99.99% for S3 Standard
  • Scalability: effectively unlimited capacity
  • Object size: up to 5 TB per object (multipart upload for large objects)
  • Bucket names must be globally unique across all AWS accounts
  • Region-scoped: an object is stored in the Region of its bucket and stays there unless you move/replicate it
  • S3 Storage Classes
  • Storage Class Access Pattern Min Storage Duration Retrieval Time Relative Cost
  • S3 Standard Frequent access None Milliseconds Highest
  • S3 Intelligent-Tiering Unknown/changing access None Milliseconds Auto-optimized
  • S3 Standard-IA Infrequent access 30 days Milliseconds Lower
  • S3 One Zone-IA Infrequent, non-critical (one AZ) 30 days Milliseconds Lower still
  • S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval Rarely accessed, instant needed 90 days Milliseconds Low
  • S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval Archive 90 days Minutes to hours Very low
  • S3 Glacier Deep Archive Long-term archive 180 days Up to 12 hours Lowest

On the Exam: Frequent = Standard. Unknown/changing = Intelligent-Tiering (it moves objects between tiers automatically for you). Infrequent = IA. Archive with instant need = Glacier Instant Retrieval. Deep cold archive = Deep Archive. Watch the minimum storage duration — storing a short-lived object in Glacier can cost more due to the 90/180-day minimum charge.

S3 Key Concepts

  • Concept Description
  • Versioning Keep multiple versions of an object; protects against accidental overwrite/delete
  • Lifecycle Policies Auto-transition objects between classes or expire them after a set time
  • Replication Cross-Region Replication (CRR) or Same-Region Replication (SRR) for compliance/DR
  • Encryption Server-side (SSE-S3 default, SSE-KMS, SSE-C) or client-side
  • Access Control Bucket policies, IAM policies, S3 Access Points; Block Public Access on by default
  • Static Website Hosting Serve a static site directly from a bucket

Since 2023, S3 encrypts every new object with SSE-S3 by default , and Block Public Access is enabled on new buckets by default — both are common "secure by default" exam facts.

Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)

Amazon EBS provides persistent block-storage volumes for EC2 — effectively a virtual hard drive you attach to an instance.

  • EBS Key Facts
  • Volumes persist independently of the instance lifecycle (survive stop/start)
  • Volumes are AZ-specific — they attach only to instances in the same Availability Zone
  • Snapshots are point-in-time backups stored in S3 and are incremental (only changed blocks)
  • Volumes can be encrypted with AWS KMS, including all snapshots and data in transit to the instance
  • A single gp3/io2 volume can scale up to 64 TiB
  • EBS Volume Types
  • Type Category Use Case
  • gp3 / gp2 General Purpose SSD Boot volumes, dev/test, most workloads (gp3 is the current default)
  • io2 / io1 Provisioned IOPS SSD High-performance/transactional databases
  • st1 Throughput Optimized HDD Big data, log processing, streaming
  • sc1 Cold HDD Infrequent access, lowest-cost HDD

On the Exam: EBS = block storage for EC2; AZ-scoped . S3 = object storage; Region-scoped , accessed over HTTP/API. If data must survive instance termination, the answer is EBS or S3 — not instance store.

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

Amazon EFS is a fully managed, elastic NFS file system for Linux workloads.

  • Feature Detail
  • Protocol NFS v4
  • OS Support Linux (use FSx for Windows/SMB)
  • Scaling Grows and shrinks automatically; pay for what you use
  • Access Mounted concurrently by many EC2 instances across AZs
  • Availability Multi-AZ by default within a Region
  • Use Cases Content management, shared application files, web serving
  • Amazon FSx

Amazon FSx delivers fully managed third-party file systems:

  • Service File System Use Case
  • FSx for Windows File Server Windows NTFS (SMB) Windows apps needing SMB shares
  • FSx for Lustre Lustre HPC, ML training, high-throughput compute
  • FSx for NetApp ONTAP NetApp ONTAP Enterprise migrations from on-premises NetApp
  • FSx for OpenZFS OpenZFS Linux workloads needing ZFS features
  • AWS Storage Gateway and Hybrid Storage

AWS Storage Gateway connects on-premises applications to AWS storage (File Gateway, Volume Gateway, Tape Gateway). It is the answer when a scenario describes "keep using on-prem servers but back up or tier to the cloud."

Storage Comparison

  • Feature S3 EBS EFS
  • Type Object Block File
  • Scope Region Single AZ Region (Multi-AZ)
  • Access API/HTTP One EC2 instance* Many EC2 instances
  • Max Size 5 TB per object (unlimited total) 64 TiB per volume Petabytes
  • Durability 11 nines 99.999% 11 nines
  • Pricing Per GB stored + requests Per GB provisioned Per GB used

*EBS Multi-Attach (io1/io2) lets a volume attach to several instances, but only within one AZ.

On the Exam: "Shared file system for many instances" = EFS. "Boot disk / database disk for one instance" = EBS. "Store and serve files/objects to the internet at scale" = S3.