Blog
4/1/1: 4 Random Thoughts from me, 1 tools to help Sales Engineers, 1 quote for motivation
AWS SAA Journey Episode 4:S3 The Basics of Object Storage
- July 27, 2022
By Ramzi Marjaba
4/1/1 Weekly
S3 Stands for Simple Storage Service
Why S3?
Why not? That’s where you can store almost anything that will almost always be available (99.99% of the time) and the you should not lose files or they should not get corrupted.
They can do that through redundancy, integrity checks, automatic repair, etc.
Before we get in too deep about S3, the question that had popped in my head is why use S3 vs Dropbox or Google Drive, since they are both cloud storage?
Based on the research that I’ve done, Dropbox, google drive and SharePoint are all great for personal use, they are not so great to build applications on top off. So one is used to store files, and one is used to store “objects” that is used by applications.
And it seems that even though Google has google drive, they also have a service like S3 on GCP called Cloud Storage, and Azure has Blob Storage which I think is a weird name.
https://www.quora.com/Why-should-one-use-Amazon-S3-over-Dropbox-or-Google-Drive
And S3 is not a file storage like DropBox, it’s an object storage and the differences are not explained very well in any of the courses. They just say it’s object storage and I’m supposed to understand what that means. So found this blog by pure storage that explains:
https://blog.purestorage.com/purely-informational/object-vs-file-storage-when-and-why-to-use-them/#:~:text=File storage is organized into,a “flat” address space.
File storage is tree like with folder s and sub folders, object storage is flat. So it’s kinds like org structures.
And I asked ChatGPT to create a table for me to explain the differences. You can see the full table on the blog page.
| Aspect | File Storage | Object Storage |
|---|---|---|
| Data Organization | Uses a hierarchical directory structure | Uses a flat namespace with unique keys |
| Access Method | Accessed through mounted drives or shares | Accessed via unique object keys |
| Use Case | Suitable for traditional file-based applications | Ideal for web-scale data and unstructured data |
| Scalability | Less scalable due to hierarchical structure | Highly scalable, can handle massive data volumes |
| Metadata | Supports basic file metadata (e.g., file size, permissions) | Allows custom metadata and tags for each object |
| Data Versioning | Limited support for data versioning | Some object storage systems support data versioning |
| Data Access Performance | Performance might degrade as directories grow large | Direct and fast access to objects, regardless of scale |
| Data Durability | Good durability, but redundancy might vary based on configuration | High durability with redundant replication across data centers |
| Data Retrieval | Retrieval might require traversing directory structure | Direct access to objects based on unique keys |
| Use of APIs/SDKs | File system APIs and libraries used to interact with storage | RESTful APIs and SDKs commonly used for interactions |
| Typical Storage Medium | Network-attached storage (NAS) or storage area network (SAN) | Cloud-based storage systems |
| Common Services | NFS (Network File System), SMB (Server Message Block) | Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob Storage |
| Use Cases | Traditional file servers, shared drives, document management systems | Cloud storage, backups, content delivery, media repositories, and data lakes |
Some other advantages for S3 is:
S3 is designed for high availability 4 9s and 11 9s for durability.
Durability means we won’t lose data.
Security and encryption
Versioning (default disabled, and once enabled, cannot be disabled, only suspended)
Lifecycle management.
Cross regional backups
Let’s dig into this a bit with the 4/1/1
4 Random Thoughts From Me:
1- Put yourself in their shoes. What is their job? My customer’s job is to test their equipment so they can help their customers. Their job is not to buy from me. They need my product to help them do their job, but not more than that. So when you reach out to customers, talk to them, know that even though it’s your priority to help ease their pain by selling your product, they might have multiple pains which have a higher priority than what you can help with.
2- If you break a person’s trust, it’s much harder to get it back. I shared a story on LinkedIn of a recent experience when I assumed something about my customer and provided a solution that although would work for them, they hated one aspect of it. It broke the trust and I had to work extra hard to gain that trust back
3- When I work with customers, I am not thinking that I should build trust. I’m focused more on helping the customer and building a complete relationship with them. I’ve become friends with some and not with others, but they all know now that I will go to great lengths to help them (not at the expense of my employer obviously). This has made my job so much easier. If I say something, they know it to be true.
4- Saying NO is a big trust builder. I’ve been working with one customer who has been asking for a specific feature. Lots of back and forth and they were holding up deciding until they hear about the feature. I jumped on a call with them and informed them that the product they are using doesn’t have new features coming in often. So it’s highly likely that the feature they are asking for will not come in, and they should make a decision based on that. You can feel the immediate trust built on the phone. I was thanked for my honesty and it felt strange to them. We got one of 2 orders from them, although the second order’s status is still unknown
1 Tool:
I mentioned the SE Hotline in a previous email. This is a place where once you sign up, you would have your dedicated coach. Someone you can message at any point to discuss what you are going through. Someone to guide you on how to achieve your goals as a Sales Engineer. If this sounds interesting, check out the Beta Site below. We are looking for Founding members to be our first clients and help streamline the process.
1 Quote:
“Trust is earned when actions meet words.” – Chris Butler
Stay in the loop
Subscribe to get our latest content by email.