How to S3 concepts relate to standard filesystem concepts: Access keys, objects, …

The following mapping is often useful

  • Objects are essentially files
  • Object keys are filenames
  • An Access Key is essentially a username used for access to the S3 storage
  • A Secret Key is essentially a password for a given access key = username
  • Prefixes are folders
  • region is conceptually a fileserver although in practice it consists of multiple servers linked together