Wrapping Up S3 – More Than Just a Bucket

When I first heard “S3,” I thought —
"Okay, it’s just a place to dump files."

18 days into AWS, I now realize:
S3 is way more powerful than just storage.

It’s secure, programmable, and quietly becomes the backbone of everything else in AWS.

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🧩 What I’ve Explored in S3 So Far

Bucket Creation & Basics

• Public vs private buckets

• Folder structure (which isn’t really folders)

• File uploads via console and CLI

Hosting a Static Website

• Set up index and error pages

• Used S3 to serve an HTML site — no servers needed

• Learned that static doesn’t mean boring

Permissions & Access

• Bucket policies to control access

• IAM roles vs bucket-level controls

• Pre-signed URLs for temporary access

Versioning

• Enabled versioning and retrieved older file versions

• Accidentally deleted a file… and recovered it 😅

Lifecycle Rules

• Auto-archiving files to Glacier

• Expiring unused versions

• Keeping storage clean and cheap

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What I Didn't Expect

• That I’d enjoy using the CLI for uploading and configuring so much

• How precise the access controls need to be (and how easy it is to lock yourself out)

• That S3 is also the quiet hero behind Lambda, CloudFront, Data Lakes, and more

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Still Curious About…

• Connecting CloudFront for global delivery and caching

• Using event notifications (like triggering a Lambda when a file is uploaded)

• Experimenting with S3 object locking for compliance-type scenarios

But for now, I feel... comfortable. Not a master, but no longer a stranger to S3.

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Final Thought

S3 grew on me.
It’s like the silent co-worker who just gets stuff done. No fuss. Always available. Doesn’t ask for much.

Onward to the next AWS service.

Day 18 — S3, signed off.