AWS Nonprofits Technical Hub

The AWS Nonprofit Credit Program provides access to AWS Promotional Credit, helping to offset costs associated with implementing cloud-based solutions. This helps nonprofits meet mission goals without upfront investment in physical infrastructure. Learn about the AWS Nonprofit Credit Program.

AWS also offers the IMAGINE Grant Program to registered nonprofit organizations in the United States who are using cloud technology to solve the world's most pressing challenges. Our goal is to empower nonprofit organizations to prioritize technology as a mission-critical component of their projects and provide support for organizations pursuing technology-driven goals. As part of the program, we are seeking proposals for pilot projects, proofs of concepts, or existing programs that utilize technology in a new or expanded way. Learn about the AWS IMAGINE Grant Program.

There are three types of cloud data storage: object storage, file storage, and block storage. Each offers their own advantages and have their own use cases:

1. Object storage - Applications developed in the cloud often take advantage of object storage's vast scalability and metadata characteristics. Object storage solutions like Amazon S3 are ideal for building modern applications from scratch that require scale and flexibility, and can also be used to import existing data stores for analytics, backup, or archive.
2. File storage - Some applications need to access shared files and require a file system. This type of storage is often supported with a network attached storage (NAS) server. File storage solutions like Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) are ideal for use cases like large content repositories, development environments, media stores, or user home directories.
3. Block storage - Other enterprise applications like databases or ERP systems often require dedicated, low latency storage for each host. This is analogous to direct-attached storage (DAS) or a Storage Area Network (SAN). Block-based cloud storage solutions like Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) are provisioned with each virtual server and offer the ultra low latency required for high performance workloads.

AWS offers archive storage solutions for long term retention, compliance, and digital preservation. Amazon S3 provides you with virtually unlimited scale, 99.999999999% durability, and the highest standards of data security, all with lower costs and faster access times than on-premises tape storage. The Amazon S3 Glacier storage classes are purpose-built for data archiving, providing you with the highest performance, most retrieval flexibility, and the lowest cost archive storage in the cloud. You can now choose from three archive storage classes optimized for different access patterns and storage duration. Amazon S3 Glacier storage classes deliver cost-optimized archive storage, whether you need to access your archive data quarterly, annually, or somewhere in between.

Customers can store infrequently accessed digital media assets in highly durable and massively scalable storage solutions at very low costs. They can easily move data from archival to distribution when needed, and extract insights by easily accessing adjacent AWS services such as AWS Elemental Media Services, AWS Lambda, Amazon Elastic Transcoder, and Amazon Rekognition, to maximize the value of data and generate top line value. Modernize data archiving.

Amazon S3 offers a range of storage classes that you can choose from based on the data access, resiliency, and cost requirements of your workloads. Amazon S3 storage classes are purpose-built to provide the lowest cost storage for different access patterns. Amazon S3 storage classes are ideal for virtually any use case, including those with demanding performance needs, data residency requirements, unknown or changing access patterns, or archival storage.

The Amazon S3 storage classes include Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering for automatic cost savings for data with unknown or changing access patterns, Amazon S3 Standard for frequently accessed data, Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA) and Amazon S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA) for less frequently accessed data, S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval for archive data that needs immediate access, S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval (formerly S3 Glacier) for rarely accessed long-term data that does not require immediate access, and Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive (S3 Glacier Deep Archive) for long-term archive and digital preservation with retrieval in hours at the lowest cost storage in the cloud. If you have data residency requirements that can’t be met by an existing AWS Region, you can use the Amazon S3 Outposts storage class to store your Amazon S3 data on premises. Amazon S3 also offers capabilities to manage your data throughout its lifecycle. Once an S3 Lifecycle policy is set, your data will automatically transfer to a different storage class without any changes to your application.

Learn more about Amazon S3 storage classes »

The Amazon S3 Glacier storage classes are purpose-built for data archiving, providing you with the highest performance, most retrieval flexibility, and the lowest cost archive storage in the cloud. All Amazon S3 Glacier storage classes provide virtually unlimited scalability and are designed for 99.999999999% (11 nines) of data durability. The Amazon S3 Glacier storage classes deliver options for the fastest access to your archive data and the lowest-cost archive storage in the cloud. You can choose from three archive storage classes optimized for different access patterns and storage duration.

Learn more about Amazon S3 Glacier storage classes »

Customers can use AWS to run sensitive workloads regulated under the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). If you plan to include Protected Health Information (as defined by HIPAA) on AWS services, you must first accept the AWS Business Associate Addendum (AWS BAA). You can review, accept, and check the status of your AWS BAA through a self-service portal available in AWS Artifact. Any AWS service can be used with a healthcare application, but only services covered by the AWS BAA can be used to store, process, and transmit Protected Health Information under HIPAA.

Common architecting strategies for HIPAA »

View current list of services covered by the AWS BAA »

By default, all Amazon S3 resources—buckets, objects, and related subresources (for example,  lifecycle configuration and website configuration)—are private. Only the resource owner, the AWS account that created it, can access the resource. The resource owner can optionally grant access permissions to others by writing an access policy. Amazon S3 offers access policy options broadly categorized as resource-based policies and user policies. Access policies that you attach to your resources (buckets and objects) are referred to as resource-based policies. For example, bucket policies and access point policies are resource-based policies. You can also attach access policies to users in your account. These are called user policies. You can choose to use resource-based policies, user policies, or some combination of these to manage permissions to your Amazon S3 resources. You can also use access control lists (ACLs) to grant basic read and write permissions to other AWS accounts.

Learn more about Identity and access management in Amazon S3 »

The AWS Nonprofit Credit Program provides access to AWS Promotional Credit, helping to offset costs associated with implementing cloud-based solutions. This helps nonprofits meet mission goals without upfront investment in physical infrastructure. Learn about the AWS Nonprofit Credit Program.

AWS offers the Imagine Grant Program to registered nonprofit organizations in the United States who are using cloud technology to solve the world's most pressing challenges. Our goal is to empower nonprofit organizations to prioritize technology as a mission-critical component of their projects and provide support for organizations pursuing technology-driven goals. As part of the program, we are seeking proposals for pilot projects, proofs of concepts, or existing programs that utilize technology in a new or expanded way. Learn about the AWS Imagine Grant Program.