Amazon S3

Earlier today we rolled out Amazon S3, our reliable, highly scalable, low-latency data storage service.

Using SOAP and REST interfaces, developers can easily store any number of blocks of data in S3. Each block can be up to 5 GB in length, and is associated with a user-defined key and additional key/value metadata pairs. Further, each block is protected by an ACL (Access Control List) allowing the developer to keep the data private, share it for reading, or share it for reading and writing, as desired.

The system was designed to provide a data availability factor of 99.99%; all data is transparently stored in multiple locations.

S3 is a very cost-effective data storage solution. Using S3’s economical pay-as-you-go model, storing 1 GB of data for 1 month costs just 15 cents. Transferring data in and out of the system costs 20 cents per GB. As Colin Faulkingham notes, there’s also a BitTorrent interface.

I’ve got to catch a plane to Silicon Valley in a few minutes, or I’d write a lot more. You can read more at TechCrunch, Business Week, and at Scripting News. We are looking forward to seeing developers create all sorts of cool applications with this new system.

If you are in Silicon Valley, stop by and see us at SD Expo on Wednesday or Thursday.

— Jeff;