Differentiate between block storage (like EBS) and object storage (like S3).
Cloud providers offer various storage solutions, but the two most fundamental types are block storage and object storage. 'Block storage' organizes data into fixed-size blocks, which are then stored with a unique identifier. This storage is attached to a specific virtual machine over the network and acts like a physical hard drive (e.g., a SAN). The operating system on the VM has direct control over the blocks and can format them with a file system like NTFS or ext4. Block storage offers the low-latency performance required for transactional workloads, databases, or running operating systems. Amazon's Elastic Block Store (EBS) and Azure Disk Storage are prime examples. 'Object storage', on the other hand, manages data as objects. Each object consists of the data itself, a variable amount of metadata, and a globally unique identifier. Unlike the hierarchical structure of a file system, object storage has a flat address space. This architecture makes it incredibly scalable, often to petabytes and beyond, and highly durable. It's accessed via APIs (typically HTTP-based REST APIs) rather than being mounted as a drive. This makes it perfect for storing vast amounts of unstructured data like images, videos, backups, archives, and static assets for websites. Amazon S3 and Google Cloud Storage are leading object storage services.