MEPX
Chapter 4 of 10All chapters
  1. 1What the cloud is
  2. 2Service models
  3. 3Compute
  4. 4Storage and data
  5. 5Regions and zones
  6. 6Cloud networking
  7. 7Identity and access
  8. 8Cost
  9. 9Infrastructure as code
  10. 10Running things

Chapter 4 of 10

Storage and data

Objects, disks and databases.

Three kinds

Object storage holds files addressed by key, is cheap and effectively unlimited. Block storage is a disk attached to one machine. Managed databases are a running database someone else patches.

  • Static sites, images and backups belong in object storage.
  • Managed databases cost more than self-hosting and less than an outage.

Durability against availability

Object storage keeps many copies, so losing data is very unlikely, but a region can still become unreachable. Those are separate promises and are often confused.