How to create an S3 bucket using the S3 management console.

For general information on AWS S3, please see the following document: Using Amazon S3 Storage

Setup

Contact consultant@northwestern.edu to request access to the NU AWS organization, which will allow you to log in with your Northwestern credentials.

Using the AWS Management Console

To log in to the AWS Management console,

1. go to https://aws.northwestern.edu and log in with your Northwestern NetID.
2. Then, select an appropriate role and click the blue Sign In button.

To Access Amazon S3:

1. Click the magnifying glass in the upper left hand corner of the screen.
2. Type "S3" into the search box
3. Select S3 (Scalable Storage in the cloud) 

By default, you will see a navigation pane on the left, with the "Buckets" option selected. On the right, you'll see an "Account snapshot" that shows how much storage is being used among all S3 buckets you have access to. Below that, you'll see the Bucket sections, which lists the buckets you have access to, if any, with additional information about each bucket. 

Creating an Amazon S3 bucket

Click the orange "Create bucket" button in the Buckets section on the lower right of the screen. 




On the Create Bucket screen you will need to give your bucket a name and choose a region. 

• Bucket name: The name must be globally unique and contain only alphanumeric characters and dashes
• Region: If you use other AWS resources, pick the same region as you use for other work. Otherwise, pick the region that is the most geographically near to where you do your work.

Most users should keep the rest of the options on this screen as defaults. By default, S3 buckets have the following properties: 

1. Object Ownership: All objects stored in this bucket are owned by the account/role you logged in with, even if it is written to this bucket by another account. 
2. Public access: Public access to buckets and objects are blocked. Access is granted on a case by case basis to those who need it. This setting is recommended for content that you don't want freely available on the web. 
3. Bucket versioning: This feature is disabled to save space. Select Enable if you have a need to keep previous versions of files that are being changed in this bucket. Keep in mind you will pay storage costs for each version. 
4. Encryption: Encrypting objects stored in the bucket at is disabled. 
5. Object lock This feature is disabled. Enabling this feature will prevent objects from being deleted or overwritten.

If you need help deciding if you need to modify these defaults, email quest-help@northwestern.edu.

When you have entered the required information, click the orange "Create Bucket" button at the bottom right of the screen.

You should see a green banner at the top of the screen that says "Successfully created bucket '<bucketname>' ". The webpage will return to the Buckets page.

To grant read/write permissions to this bucket, see Generating an AWS IAM Key for Amazon S3.