How to create an S3 bucket using new AWS UI console

On January 12, 2022, AWS introduced a new user interface for the management console. Users can now access various services and features from the front page of the console or console home. One can add, remove, and reposition the widget tiles to redesign the console look. Some of these widgets support both quick and thorough summaries. 

Amazon S3 or Simple Storage Service is a object storage service where we can create any number of objects inside a bucket, however the number of buckets is capped at 100 per account. Bucket data can be retrieved from anywhere and at any time. Amazon S3 provides many features like availability, high scalability, performance, etc. Applications can be developed that can emply S3 for storage service. You have to pay only for the amount of storage you use with no up-front investment. We can store virtually data of any kind and of any format

What will you learn here?

In this post, we will discover the new AWS Console Home, and specifically, we will use the new S3 wizard to create a new S3 bucket. Let's begin the tour of the new AWS Console Home.

The new console home page contains widgets for various AWS tasks, for example:

Recently visited:  The services you visit or use are aggregated inside the ‘Recently visited’ block.

AWS Health: This widgets shows information related to the AWS infrastructure, account and notifications from AWS resources.

Cost and Usage: The cost incurred for using AWS resources and services are shown here.

Build a Solution: This contains static links for several tasks like launching a VM, building a web app etc. 

Trusted Advisor: This widget gives advice conforming to best practices of AWS. 

AWS has made clean provisions to not disturb the working habits of users and their ongoing workflows, for example if an user feels unusual with the new console home, he can revert back to the legacy console. This can be simply done by pressing the switch ‘Revert to previous Console Home’ under the Actions drop down menu at the top of the home page. 

Creating a S3 Bucket 

Now, let us turn our attention to the new S3 console. Our older post on creating a S3 bucket using the old console is also available here. To create a S3 bucket using the new AWS UI console, follow the steps below:

Step 1. Open the new console page after signing into your AWS account.

Step 2. Look for the S3 service inside the Recently Visited widget. If there is no S3 option here, then use the top search bar. Inside the search bar, type ‘S3’ and select the S3 service from the list.

Step 3. On the S3 dashboard, you can see the available buckets along with their details like access type, creation date and region in use. Use the ‘Create bucket’ button to create a new bucket.

Step 4. We are now on the ‘Create bucket’ wizard. First enter a name for your bucket and then select a region to deploy your storage to. If you have an existing bucket, you can choose to copy its settings over to the new bucket.

Note: There are several rules for naming a bucket which must be satisfied for an applicable name. See Bucket naming rules.

Step 5. Next, we have to configure ownership of the objects contained inside this bucket. The recommended way, which we will use, is to disable ACLs and instead use the policies such as IAM policies and S3 bucket policies:

Step 6. In the “Block Public Access settings for this bucket” section we can manage public access for the bucket and its objects. The top level option is to block all public access, however using the individual settings we can customize the bucket access for our case.

Step 7. Enable Bucket Versioning if you want to keep multiple variants/versions of a bucket's object which can be later restored.

Step 8. (Optional) Add tags to organize your resources.

Step 9. Objects stored inside a bucket can also be encrypted using Amazon S3 default encryption.

Step 10. Inside Advances settings, the Object Lock feature can be used for protecting objects from being deleted or overwritten. Remember, object lock will work only if bucket versioning is enabled.

Step 11.  Finally hit the ‘Create bucket’ button to create the bucket. You can view the created bucket on the S3 dashboard:

After the bucket is created, we can upload files and folders to it as well as create new folders inside it.

Conclusion

In this post, we have covered a high-level overview of the new AWS Console Home and also saw how to create a S3 bucket using the new S3 interface. The new Console Home is still upgrading to provide a better experience to users, and more features are expected to be added in the future.