Amazon’s exclusive benefits Archives

Amazon Prime is probably best known for two things: free two-day (scratch that: one-day!) shipping and Netflix-style video streaming. Those are decidedly worthwhile perks, especially considering the relatively low $119 annual subscription charge. (In comparison, a basic Netflix subscription costs $108 all by itself). But a Prime membership affords more than just shipping and streaming. A lot more.

Here's a look at every single benefit included with Prime -- along with a few Amazon services you might have thought were included, but actually cost extra. (Don't have a subscription at the moment? You can sign up for Prime here, even if it's just to get a 30-day trial -- and if you're reading this during Prime Day season, find out how to get Prime Day deals without being a member.) 

The complete list of Prime perks is surprisingly long. Let's start with everyone's favorite: fast, free shipping.

Shipping benefits

Free overnight shipping: In the beginning, Prime afforded a fantastic shipping upgrade: Free two-day delivery on many, if not most, of Amazon's physical goods -- even if it's just one item and it costs just a few bucks. ($3 HDMI cable, anyone?) Earlier this year, however, the benefit got even better: Amazon transitioned to overnight shipping for millions of products. Not in a hurry? When you get to the checkout page, look for a "no-rush delivery" option, which can net you a small credit (usually $1) that can be applied to digital purchases: e-books, movie rentals and so on.

Free release-date delivery: Suppose you preorder a new book from your favorite author or a hot new tech product. As a Prime subscriber, you'll receive that item on the exact day it's released -- not a day or two later. Only certain items are eligible, of course.

Free two-hour delivery: Prime Now takes things hyperlocal, delivering Whole Foods groceries and other items in just two hours -- free if you spend at least $35, $4.99 if you don't. What's more, Amazon offers Whole Foods discounts exclusively for Prime subscribers (see below).

Amazon S3 or Amazon Simple Storage Service is a service offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that provides object storage through a web service interface.^[1][2] Amazon S3 uses the same scalable storage infrastructure that Amazon.com uses to run its global e-commerce network.^[3] Amazon S3 can be employed to store any type of object which allows for uses like storage for Internet applications, backup and recovery, disaster recovery, data archives, data lakes for analytics, and hybrid cloud storage. AWS launched Amazon S3 in the United States on March 14, 2006,^[1][4] then in Europe in November 2007.^[5]

Design[edit]

Although Amazon Web Services (AWS) does not publicly provide the details of S3's technical design, Amazon S3 manages data with an object storage architecture^[6] which aims to provide scalability, high availability, and low latency with 99.999999999% durability and between 99.95% to 99.99% availability (though there is no service-level agreement for durability).^[3]

The basic storage units of Amazon S3 are objects which are organized into buckets. Each object is identified by a unique, user-assigned key.^[7] Buckets can be managed using either the console provided by Amazon S3, programmatically using the AWS SDK, or with the Amazon S3 REST application programming interface (API). Objects can be managed using the AWS SDK or with the Amazon S3 REST API and can be up to five terabytes in size with two kilobytes of metadata.^[8][9] Additionally, objects can be downloaded using the HTTP GET interface and the BitTorrent protocol.

Requests are authorized using an access control list associated with each object bucket and support versioning which is disabled by default.^[10] Note that since buckets are typically the size of an entire file system mount in other systems, this access control scheme is very coarse-grained, i.e. you cannot have unique access controls associated with individual files. Bucket names and keys are chosen so that objects are addressable using HTTP URLs:

• (for a bucket created in the US East (N. Virginia) region)
• (for requests using IPv4 or IPv6)
• (for requests using IPv4 or IPv6)
• (if static website hosting is enabled on the bucket)
• (if static website hosting is enabled on the bucket)
• (where the filetransfer exits Amazons network at the last possible moment so as to give the fastest possible transfer speed and lowest latency)
• (where bucket is a DNSCNAME record pointing to )

Amazon S3 can be used to replace significant existing (static) web-hosting infrastructure with HTTP client accessible objects.^[11] The Amazon AWS authentication mechanism allows the bucket owner to create an authenticated URL which is valid for a specified amount of time.

Every item in a bucket can also be served as a BitTorrent feed. The Amazon S3 store can act as a seed host for a torrent and any BitTorrent client can retrieve the file. This can drastically reduce the bandwidth cost for the download of popular objects. While the use of BitTorrent does reduce bandwidth, AWS does not provide native bandwidth limiting and, as such, users have no access to automated cost control. This can lead to users on the free-tier of Amazon S3, or small hobby users, amassing dramatic bills. AWS representatives have stated that a bandwidth limiting feature was on the design table from 2006 to 2010,^[12] but in 2011 the feature is no longer in development.^[13]

A bucket can be configured to save HTTP log information to a sibling bucket; this can be used in data mining operations.^[14]

There are various User Mode File System (FUSE)-based file systems for Unix-like operating systems (Linux, etc.) that can be used to mount an S3 bucket as a file system such as S3QL. The semantics of the Amazon S3 file system are not that of a POSIX file system, so the file system may not behave entirely as expected.^[15]

Hosting websites[edit]

Amazon S3 provides the option to host static HTML websites with index document support and error document support.^[16] Websites hosted on S3 may designate a default page to display and another page to display in the event of a partially invalid URL, such as a 404 error, which provide useful content to visitors of a URL containing a CNAME record hostname rather than a direct Amazon S3 bucket reference when the URL does not contain a valid S3 object key, such as when a casual user initially visits a URL that is a bare non-Amazon hostname.

Amazon S3 logs[edit]

Amazon S3 allows users to enable or disable logging. If enabled, the logs are stored in Amazon S3 buckets which can then be analyzed. These logs contain useful information such as:

Logs can be analyzed and managed using third-party tools like S3Stat, Cloudlytics, Qloudstat, AWStats, and Splunk.

Amazon S3 tools[edit]

Amazon S3 provides an API for developers.^[17] The AWS console provides tools for managing and uploading files but it is not capable of managing large buckets or editing files.^[18] Third-party websites like S3edit.com or software like Cloudberry Explorer, ForkLift and WebDrive have the capability to edit files on Amazon S3.^[19]

Amazon S3 storage classes[edit]

Amazon S3 offers four different storage classes that offer different levels of durability, availability, and performance requirements.^[20]

• Amazon S3 Standard is the default class.
• Amazon S3 Standard Infrequent Access (IA) is designed for less frequently accessed data. Typical use cases are backup and disaster recovery solutions.
• Amazon S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access is designed for data that is not often needed but when required, needs to be accessed rapidly. Data is stored in one zone and if that zone is destroyed, all data is lost.
• Amazon Glacier is designed for long-term storage of data that is infrequently accessed and where retrieval latency of minutes or hours is acceptable. "Glacier Deep Archive" is an alternative with a retrieval time of at least 12 hours, but 1/4th the price. It is intended as an alternative to magnetic tape libraries, and is designed for long term retention of data for 7 to 10 years.

Notable users[edit]

• Photo hosting service SmugMug has used Amazon S3 since April 2006. They experienced a number of initial outages and slowdowns, but after one year they described it as being "considerably more reliable than our own internal storage" and claimed to have saved almost $1 million in storage costs.^[21]
• Netflix uses Amazon S3 as their system of record. Netflix implemented a tool, S3mper,^[22] to address the Amazon S3 limitations of eventual consistency.^[23] S3mper stores the filesystem metadata: filenames, directory structure, and permissions in Amazon DynamoDB.^[24]
• reddit is hosted on Amazon S3.^[25]
• Bitcasa,^[26] and Tahoe-LAFS-on-S3,^[27] among others, use Amazon S3 for online backup and synchronization services. In 2016, Dropbox stopped using Amazon S3 services and developed its own cloud server.^[28][29]
• Mojang hosts Minecraft game updates and player skins on Amazon S3.^[30]
• Tumblr, Formspring, and Pinterest host images on Amazon S3.
• Swiftype's CEO has mentioned that the company uses Amazon S3.^[31]
• Amazon S3 was used by some enterprises as a long term archiving solution until Amazon Glacier was released in August 2012.^{[citation needed]}
• The API has become a popular method to store objects.^[32] As a result, many applications have been built to natively support the Amazon S3 API^[33] which includes applications that write data to Amazon S3 and Amazon S3-compatible object stores:^[34]

S3 API and competing services[edit]

The broad adoption of Amazon S3 and related tooling has given rise to competing services based on the S3 API. These services use the standard programming interface; however, they are differentiated by their underlying technologies and supporting business models.^[60] A cloud storage standard (like electrical and networking standards) enables competing service providers to design their services and clients using different parts in different ways yet still communicate and provide the following benefits:^[61]

1. Increase competition by providing a set of rules and a level playing field, encouraging market entry by smaller companies which might otherwise be precluded.
2. Encourage innovation by cloud storage & tool vendors, & developers because they can focus on improving their own products and services instead of focusing on compatibility.
3. Allow economies of scale in implementation (i.e., if a service provider encounters an outage or as clients outgrow their tools and need faster operating systems or tools, they can easily swap out solutions).
4. Provide timely solutions for delivering functionality in response to demands of the marketplace (i.e., as business growth in new locations increases demand, clients can easily change or add service providers simply by subscribing to the new service).

Examples of competing Amazon S3-compliant storage implementations:

History[edit]

At AWS Summit 2013 NYC, CTO Werner Vogels announces 2 trillion objects stored in S3.

Amazon Web Services introduced AmazonS3 in 2006.^[67][68]

Amazon S3 is reported to store more than 2 trillion objects as of April 2013^[update].^[69] This is up from 10 billion objects as of October 2007,^[70] 14 billion objects in January 2008, 29 billion objects in October 2008,^[71] 52 billion objects in March 2009,^[72] 64 billion objects in August 2009,^[73] and 102 billion objects in March 2010.^[74]. In November 2017 AWS added default encryption capabilities at bucket level. ^[75]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

Citations[edit]

If you plan on skipping the Black Friday crowds this year in favor of ordering Christmas gifts from the couch, we're right there with you. But even though Amazon has your back this season with two-day shipping, it's not exactly the most discrete way to order gifts for your family.

Those giant "recently viewed" or "inspired by your shopping trends" modules essentially let your partner, kids, and whoever else shares your Prime account know exactly what they'll find under the tree this year. But thankfully there's a way to preserve the Christmas magic.

Here's how to order the perfect gifts without blowing the surprise, ranked from easiest to stealthiest.

1. Archive your orders.

Unfortunately, Amazon does not permit users to permanently delete past orders. However, you can still hide them from wandering eyes using the archive feature.

1. On the Amazon homepage, click orders on the top right of the menu bar.
2. Find the order in question and click "Archive order."

You can only archive 100 orders total, but it's possible to unarchive an order after the gift giving is all said and done.

2. Hide your history.

To prevent any giveaway product suggestions, don't forget to clear your shopping history too.

1. On the Amazon homepage, click on Browsing History in the center of the menu bar.
2. Find the specific items and click "remove."
3. To wipe everything, click "manage history" on the right-hand side and select "remove all items."

3. Set up an Amazon Household account.

Archiving orders and clearing your browser history is a quick way to hide a few secrets, but if you'd generally like more privacy on a family account, consider setting up an Amazon Household.

This Prime membership feature allows you to create different profiles while sharing the same benefits. Each Household can include up to 10 people:

• 2 adults (ages 18 and over) that share payment methods but keep separate personal accounts
• Up to 4 teens (ages 13 to 17) that have different logins so they can shop and stream while keeping parents informed
• Up to 4 children (suggested for ages 12 and under) with access to parent-approved content but no shopping

CREATE AN AMAZON HOUSEHOLD

4. Use an Amazon Locker.

If you're really sneaky, consider getting your gifts delivered to somewhere other than your house. (You wouldn't want someone to open the box mistakenly!) That could include your office, a friend's house, or an Amazon Locker. These self-service delivery locations come as a free perk with Prime. Plus it's a secure option if you're out of town or worried about porch thieves this season. Here's how it works:

1. Use this search feature to find one close by.
2. Click on a location to add it to your address book.
3. Select it as your shipping address during check-out.
4. Once your package is delivered, you'll receive an email with a unique pickup code.
5. At the Locker, follow the instructions on the screen to retrieve your box.

FYI that if you don't pick up the order within three days, Amazon will automatically return the package for a refund. Your order will also have to meet a few size and weight requirements. (Sorry, but no giant Christmas trees allowed.)

FIND AN AMAZON LOCKER