S3

New

To create an S3 bucket you will need to provide the following parameters.

• Bucket Name - You must provide a unique S3 bucket name. Remember, S3 is a huge public repository that everyone shares, so we recommend using your account name as a prefix to provide a rational identification.
• Location - Specify a preferred AWS region for storage. The 'default' option will create a bucket in AWS US-East.

Tip: 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 host names.

Index

As a rough analogy, you can think of S3 as one large hard drive that everyone shares. Within S3, a 'bucket' is essentially a folder where you can store files. The S3 Browser lists all S3 buckets that are associated with this account. Select a bucket to view its contents.

Note: Although S3 buckets are very easy to set up and use, Amazon's Elastic Block Store (EBS), which provides persistent data storage on EC2, offers several tangible advantages. Not the least of which is performance gains.

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View

Below is a list of all folders/files in the selected S3 bucket. Click the folder or key (filename) to view the file. Click the URL link to view the public/private URL to the object.

Upload a file
Browse and upload files to the S3 bucket. By default, an item is set as 'private' when it is first uploaded. After successfully uploading a file, you will need to refresh the page to see the new item. An item must be set to 'public-read' in order to be accessible to the public.

Permissions
If a file is 'public', anyone can use the URL link to view/download the file. If the file is 'private', the public may receive an "Access Denied" message if they test the URL. Sample URL: https://MyBucketName.s3.amazonaws.com/myfile.txt

Copy a file
When you copy a file, be sure to specify the new name for the file in the destination path, otherwise a new file will not be created. Don't forget to include the file's extension!

Move a file
You can also move a file to a different bucket by changing the destination path accordingly. For example, if 'test.txt' is currently in 'MyBucket1' (MyBucket1/test.txt), specify the following path 'MyBucket2/text.txt' to move the file to the other bucket. Remember, you must specify an S3 bucket that already exists and is within your own account, otherwise you will receive a "404 Not Found" or "403 Forbidden" failure message. When moving a file, make sure that the subsequent audit entry message confirms that the move was successful. Currently, you cannot move files to S3 buckets outside of your own account, even if the bucket has a 'public-write' directory.