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Your First S3 Bucket

S3-compatible object storage is where you put files, backups, media, and static assets. It's accessed via the S3 API from the Cloud Services Portal, the aws CLI, or any S3-compatible tool. This page gets you from zero to your first uploaded object.

Prerequisites

  • You can sign in to the Cloud Services Portal (see First Login).
  • You need a project with the S3 / object-storage quota profile — if you don't have one yet, step 1 shows how to create it. Creating an S3 project requires Admin rights in the Cloud Services Portal.

The path in four steps

  1. Create an S3 project (if you don't have one yet) — under Object Storage → S3, click Create Project, pick the object-storage quota profile.

    Create S3 project

  2. Generate EC2 Credentials — each project needs an Access Key / Secret Key pair. These are what the aws CLI and other S3 tools authenticate with. Select your project, click Credentials, then + Create Credentials.

    Create EC2 Credentials

  3. Create a Bucket — either in the portal (Create Bucket button) or from the CLI:

    aws s3 mb s3://my-first-bucket

    Bucket names must be globally unique, 3-63 characters, lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens.

    Create Bucket

  4. Upload an object — drag-and-drop in the portal's S3 Upload Manager, or from the CLI:

    aws s3 cp README.md s3://my-first-bucket/
aws s3 ls s3://my-first-bucket/

    Upload Files

Going further

  • Multi-region replication — store data in two geographically separated Swiss regions for disaster recovery.

    Multi-Region

  • Static website hosting — serve a bucket directly as a website.

    S3 Website

  • AWS CLI & IAM — bucket policies, lifecycle rules, presigned URLs, and the full IAM feature set.

    AWS CLI & IAM

AWS CLI setup

The snippets above assume the aws CLI is installed and your environment has AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, AWS_ENDPOINT_URL, and AWS_DEFAULT_REGION exported. See the AWS CLI guide for full installation and configuration.

Next step

Tired of clicking through the portal? Automate everything with Terraform and the OpenStack CLI.