Are you tired of slow loading times and unreliable website performance? Look no further than AWS S3 – the hosting solution that’ll leave your website feeling like it’s been hitting the gym. Say goodbye to buffering videos and hello to lightning-fast speeds. AWS S3: because nobody likes a sluggish website, not even your customers.
Let’s look at the differences between static and dynamic websites.
What is a static website?
It refers to a collection of web pages whose content is stable and remains the same for every user. Every web page on a static website is developed as a single HTML file. Upon request from the visitor, the content is delivered from the server to the web page exactly as it is. This content does not change unless the original HTML file is edited at the code level. Static websites can be updated manually page by page only. Every visitor receives and views the same content. Thus, static websites suit best websites that do not require frequent updates such as resume builder websites.
What is a dynamic website?
A dynamic website is one where content on the web pages is allowed to change as per the visitor’s profile. Dynamic websites are built using server-side language. All data and content in a dynamic website are stored in a database that connects to web pages. This allows you to customize and personalize the website content, user experience, and what to display for a specific user. Content updates can be made to many pages at the same time. Dynamic websites can deliver content to users based on their geographical locations. Examples of dynamic websites are YouTube, Instagram, News websites, etc.
Now let’s discuss the benefits of using AWS S3 to host data like images, videos, and static websites.
- Security
- While using a dedicated server, we may not follow the apt security measures leading to data security risks. Data in Amazon S3 is secure by default. The data in S3 is accessed only by the account owner.
- Amazon S3 offers a feature to encrypt the data at rest and data in transit. Data is replicated in multiple availability zones to secure data for maximum availability and durability.
- All Amazon data centers across the world are well protected against natural disasters.
- In traditional servers, you have fear of getting hacked. But Amazon offers several features of reliability and security.
- Low cost
- Unlike your server, it is less expensive as you only pay for what you use. For example, hosting on your server is expensive and the price is fixed whether you use it or not.
- In S3 you can store a large amount of data at a meager cost. S3 uses lifecycle policies to move data from one storage class to another based on access patterns and data usage rules. Setting lifecycle policy ensures optimal use of S3 service.
- Easy data transfer
- Data transfer in and out of S3 is easy, less time-consuming, and low-cost.
- AWS offers dozens of options to transfer data to S3. We can categorize data transfer tools into three categories: first-party online services, third-party online services, and offline services.
- First-party online services include S3 Command-line Interface (CLI), AWS Direct Connect, AWS DataSync, AWS Storage Gateway, and AWS Data Migration Service (DMS). These services are suitable for simple transfers and significant lift and shift migration projects.
- Third-party online services include tools and services to plan seamless data transfers.
- Offline services are used for moving massive amounts of data with specific security requirements. These include AWS Snowball, AWS Snowball Edge, and AWS Snowmobile.
- Availability
- Traditional servers may face downtime leading to traffic distortion. Amazon S3 ensures to replicate of the data in at least two availability zones (AZ). In case of any downtime, data from other AZs is fetched to fulfill the traffic request.
- The website contents are securely stored in S3 and well protected against power and network outages as well as hardware failure. There is 99.999999999% availability to access your data at any time.
In the later blogs, we will discuss how Amazon S3 can be combined with AWS Cloudfront to achieve low latency and good page speed across global locations. Stay tuned!
Well explained