Object Storage

If you squint really hard, it feels like S3 is a file system in the cloud... but it's not. It's technically an object storage system - which is not quite the same thing.

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Traditional File Storage

"File storage" is what you're already familiar with:

Files are stored in a hierarchy of directories
A file's system-level metadata (like timestamp and permissions) is managed by the file system, not the file itself

File storage is great for single-machine-use (like your laptop), but it doesn't distribute well across many servers. It's optimized for low-latency access to a small number of files on a single machine.

Object Storage

Object storage is designed to be more scalable, available, and durable than file storage because it can be easily distributed across many machines:

Objects are stored in a flat namespace (no directories)
An object's metadata is stored with the object itself

Assignment

Open the video object we uploaded in the last lesson in the S3 console and look at the "Object overview" - you should see a bunch of metadata about the object:
- Size
- Type
- Entity tag
- etc.
Use the AWS CLI to read the metadata of your uploaded vertical video object, and redirect the output to /tmp/object_metadata.txt

aws s3api head-object --bucket BUCKET_NAME --key OBJECT_KEY > /tmp/object_metadata.txt

Replace BUCKET_NAME and OBJECT_KEY with the name of your bucket and the key of your object

Run and submit the CLI tests.

The Boot.dev CLI requires you to be signed in to submit your solution!

Copy/paste one of the following commands into your terminal:

Run

bootdev run 44bbc0a9-f066-47e1-8f7b-927ee2255d6c

Submit

bootdev run 44bbc0a9-f066-47e1-8f7b-927ee2255d6c -s

To run and submit the tests for this lesson, you must have an active Boot.dev membership

Using the Bootdev CLI

The Bootdev CLI is the only way to submit your solution for this type of lesson. We need to be able to run commands in your environment to verify your solution.

You can install it here. It's a Go program hosted on GitHub, so you'll need Go installed as well. Instructions are on the GitHub page.