Create a New S3 Bucket
Table of Contents
Objective
To create a Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket for data storage and retrieval.
Table of Contents
Prerequisites
- 'actor' user role privileges in the RightScale account.
- If you plan to use the MySQL Backup feature in the RightScale ServerTemplates, be sure to make an S3 bucket first before you use the ServerTemplates.
Overview
In S3, a bucket is essentially a folder where you can store files in the Amazon cloud. Think of S3 as one big hard drive that everyone shares. As a result, you'll have to create unique bucket names. You will not be able to create generic bucket names like "files" or "images." Therefore, it's a good idea to add your application name as a prefix to any bucket name (e.g. myapp-images). The maximum number of S3 buckets per account is 100. The ownership of an S3 bucket is associated with your AWS Account Number and is non-transferrable. However, if a bucket is deleted, its name can be used to create a new S3 bucket in any AWS account.
As a best practice, create S3 buckets where the name is all in lower-case letters. Refrain from using underscores (_) as it's been known to cause problems at the DNS level. If you are using one of RightScale's MySQL ServerTemplates that support continuous backups of your database to S3, you need to specify an S3 bucket where the mysqldump files will be stored and retrieved. You should create an S3 bucket for this purpose before you launch a MySQL server.
Upper-case and lower-case letters are considered unique characters. For example, you can create an S3 bucket with the name 'MyBucket' and another bucket with 'mybucket' as its name.
WARNING! Watch out for two servers that backup into the same S3 bucket with the same prefix. You'll run into problems if you "Clone" a Deployment and forget to rename the prefix or the name of the S3 bucket before launching the Server.
Steps
At a minimum, you need to create an S3 bucket that you can later use to upload a dump (*.gz) of your MySQL database. If you are not using an SVN repository, you may want to create a separate bucket where you can store a tarball of your application code, which will be used by your Application Servers to retrieve your web application.
Create an S3 Bucket
Create an S3 bucket which you will use to store a mysql dump of your database.
Go to Clouds > AWS Global > S3 Browser. Click New Bucket.
- Bucket Name - Remember, the S3 namespace is global, so it might be hard to find a generic bucket name that's not already being used by someone else. Therefore, you might want to use your company or project name as a prefix for your bucket name. For example, 'myproject-db' or 'myproject-app'. It is recommended that you use only lower case letters when naming your S3 bucket. This is because of a backwards compatibility issue: S3 is case sensitive, but DNS is not, so there is ambiguity when mapping bucket names to hostnames. Also, you are not allowed to use spaces or periods in the bucket name. See FAQ 94 - What are valid S3 bucket names?
Note: In order to access the bucket from the web, the name must be a valid DNS hostname.
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Region - Although the namespace of an S3 bucket is global, the actual location of the bucket exists in a particular AWS Region. Therefore, for performance reasons, you should create the S3 bucket in the AWS Region that's in the same geographic region as a majority of your customers/visitors. Similarly, you will also want to launch your servers in the same geographic region. Select the desired region from the dropdown.
NOTE: US Standard (i.e. US-East) is the default region for a new Amazon S3 bucket.
Click Save.
Note: If you are going to pull your application code from an S3 bucket instead of from an SVN repository, create a second bucket for your application code (e.g. myproject-app).
Notes
- You will not be able to delete a bucket until all of its contents have been deleted.
- Although EBS Snapshots are technically stored in S3 as well, they are not accessible via the S3 Browser.
See also
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