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Amazon S3 may stand for simple storage service but figuring out how to get started with it can seem anything but. Thats mostly due to the fact that S3 was designed to help developers build cloud-computing tools and is just one of about 70 different services included in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform.

During this guide, well give you a quick overview of how storage with Amazon S3 works and how to set it up. Well also show you how you can build your cloud storage and backup strategy around S3 with minimal work using friendly integration software like that developed by CloudBerry Labs.

Among cloud storage services, few have as many data center regions 14 around the world as Amazon S3. Thats because Amazon S3 is built on the same infrastructure used by the Amazon.com shopping platform.

The advantage of being able to choose a region near you is that it decreases latency, which translates to faster transfers to and from the cloud. A second key advantage of using S3 is that youre only charged for what you use. That helps make S3 much more scalable than many other cloud storage options, like Backblaze B2.

Before you get started setting up S3, youll want to understand the fees, of course. The nice thing is that youre only charged for what you use, which helps control costs. At the same time, not understanding how charges are accrued can lead to some unpleasant surprises.

Amazon charges both a flat per gigabyte storage and a usage rate for various transactions. The rates vary by region but not much, except in South America where theyre around double.

Heres a look at the U.S. East (Virginia) rates:

Standard and standard infrequent access are two different storage classes offered by S3. Storage classes let you control costs even more by reducing base storage rates for data you dont need to access often.

Theres a third S3 storage class called reduced redundancy storage which decreases the number of copies of your data stored. Plus, theres a separate cloud storage service called Amazon Glacier thats designed for archiving and disaster recovery.

For usage charges, any uploads to Amazon S3 are free. Retrievals are charged per gigabyte per month:

Amazon also charges usage for other transactions, although if youre just using S3 for sync or backup, youll never need to worry about them.

With that out of the way, lets set you up with Amazon S3.

To get started with S3, head to the AWS console page and click the sign in to the console button.

Youll be redirected to the login page where you can either sign in or create an AWS account. If you already have an Amazon.com account, you can just login with those credentials.

Now that youre logged into AWS, you need to find S3 from among the 70 plus services available. You can browse the listings under all services to find it under the storage heading, or just type S3 into the search bar at the top of the page.

Youll be sent to the S3 management console, where you can set up your cloud storage by creating a storage bucket.

With AWS, by default, any account can create up to 100 cloud storage buckets. If you need more, you can submit a service limit increase request.

Click the create bucket button to get started.

Youll be asked to enter a name for you bucket and select a region.

Any name you enter must be unique, meaning accounts held by others cant have the same name. Also, Amazon enforces DNS-compliant naming conventions in all areas except for the U.S. East region.

Here are the DNS-compliant naming rules according to Amazon:

The region you select will determine which data center your bucket is kept in. Choose a region close to you for faster speeds.

Once youre done, click the next button to set up your bucket properties.

There are three key properties you can set now or later:

Next up, you can set permissions to allow others to read or write to your S3 bucket.

Permissions can be set for both objects and object permissions. Objects are files or folders. Object permissions enable or disable read and write capabilities of the access control list (ACL), which lets others control permissions, too.

The final step is simply a review of everything youve set.

If everything looks good, click create bucket.

Now that your bucket is created, you can start storing data in it. Back on your S3 homepage, clicking on your new bucket will let you do that.

Youll be redirected to an interface for managing your bucket with four tabs at the top: objects, properties, permissions and management. For the moment, well stay on the objects tab.

Click on the get started button at the bottom of the tab. A pop-up window will open that will walk you through the upload steps.

The first step requires that you click the add files button. You can then browse your file system to find and upload files.

You can only upload one file at a time and cant upload folders. So, the process is going to be slow going if you manage your S3 cloud storage this way. Well address this issue shortly, so stick with us.

The next step lets you set permissions and is identical to step during the bucket creation process. Step three is to set properties.

The storage class property lets you change your bucket from standard, to standard-inactive, to reduced redundancy.

Encryption lets you choose whether or not Amazon encrypts your data at rest in the cloud. There are two options: an S3 master key or an Amazon KMS master key. KMS is Amazons key management service. For a cost, it lets you created and manage your own encryption keys for added security and compliance reasons.

Click on next to review your settings before uploading your content by clicking the upload button. The process should be pretty quick. We measured speeds between 1MB/s and 1.5MB/s, which is better than most cloud storage services.

Back on the main page, you can also create folders under the objects tab to organize your cloud storage space.

Once youve got data stored in S3, you can adjust the properties and permissions you set at any time by visiting the tabs for either category.

The properties tab includes a few additional elements youll want to be aware of. These include static website hosting, event monitoring and data copying across different Amazon S3 regions.

A fourth tab called management includes options for life-cycle management. Life-cycle management lets you automatically transfer data from one storage class to another. For example, transferring files from standard storage to Amazon Glacier, which is used for archiving.

You can also set data to delete automatically. Both transfer and delete transactions can be configured to happen based on a set of rules you define.

The management tab also hastools for analytics, metric and inventory.

While setting up Amazon S3 buckets turns out to be pretty easy, after all, having to backup one file at a time isnt going to work for most people. Unlike typical cloud storage and cloud backup services, theres no way from within the S3 console to automatically sync or backup multiple files. Thats where good third-party software comes in handy.

You can find software for both home and office use of varying degrees of cost, performance and features. Well use perhaps the most recognized, and a personal favorite, developer as an example: Cloudberry Labs.

Cloudberry Labs produces three different types of software that integrate with Amazon S3:

We wont go into depth on these the capabilities of these tools here, but lets take a quick look at how easily they integrate with S3 using CloudBerry Box as an example. If youd like more information, check out our CloudBerry Backup review.

Once you install and start CloudBerry Box, it sets up a sync folder on your desktop called CloudBerryBox. You can connect that sync folder to S3 (or another storage service) via the desktop app.

With Amazon S3, you need to generate keys to activate this connection. Back in the AWS portal, click on your account name on the top-right side and select my security credentials from the drop-down menu.

On the next page, click on the line for access keys.

Click on the create new access key button. This will generate both the access key ID and secret access key you need to connect CloudBerry Box to Amazon S3. Once you close this screen, you wont be able to retrieve your secret key again. You can download a key file if you want for safeguarding.

Input the keys in the respective fields in the CloudBerry Box application. Then select the cloud storage bucket you want to connect to in the bucket name field.

To check the connection, hit the test connection button.

Thats all there is to it. Going forward, anything put in the CloudBerryBox sync folder should upload to the cloud. The same basic approach will let you connect Cloudberry Explorer, CloudBerry Backup and similar services to S3.

Amazon S3 probably isnt going to be the solution most home consumers will want to go with. $0.023 per gigabyte per month for storage equates to $23 per terabyte. Meanwhile, cloud storage services like Sync.com give you 2TB of storage for $8 per month. Cloud backup services like CrashPlan give you unlimited backup for $5.99 per month.

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However, S3 has its uses, particularly for entrepreneurs, developers and businesses looking for more flexibility, features and scalability. While the service isnt quite as easy to set up as some consumer options, the added perks you get by integrating it with powerful third-party software like CloudBerry make it worth the effort.

Wed love to hear about your own experiences setting up Amazon S3 and what third-party tools you use to streamline your storage process. So, feel free to let us know in the comments below. Thank you for reading.

Read more:
A Beginner's Guide on How Cloud Backup With Amazon S3 Works - Cloudwards