Amazon s3 Mastery - THE How-To' Guides For Amazon S3

Amazon Web Services provides different levels or Classes of Storage to put your files in and this Lecture details what these Amazon S3 Storage Classes are and which one or ones you need for your S3 Objects (files).

In this Lecture we will cover the Amazon S3 pricing.

I'll show you a couple of my own bills (old & new) to provide real-life examples of what to expect from the cost of using Amazon S3 to host your files. This lecture will simplify things and hopefully remove the air of confusion and replace it with the sweet smell of savings.

In this lecture you will learn the steps involved in plugging in the numbers & properly using the AWS pricing calculator. Also some helpful tips on how else you can use the info from the results generated from the calculator.

In the past you had to sign up for each service in the AWS individually, this includes s3.

Now you have instant access to all the tools as soon as you sign up for your AWS account. This video covers some time & money saving tips in signing up for your AWS account.

Everything you ever wanted to know about a bucket (Amazon s3 Bucket that is) is detailed in this video.

After completing this lecture you will be able to properly create your Amazon s3 Buckets. You will know the correct naming conventions, the correct region & some helpful tips & ideas on names for your buckets.

This lecture walks you around the AWS Management Console and provides you with tips on customizing the features of your AWS Console, how to change your root password (& what your root password is) as well as things to be aware of as Amazon changes things.

The IAM service is where you go to create and manage users, groups & their passwords. This lecture gives you the nickle tour of the IAM dashboard.

The IAM account setting is the first thing you tackle before creating users & groups. This lecture covers the 'Why' & 'How'

This lecture will show you how to create a User with Admin rights and why you should do so.

You will also learn why these 'Users' do NOT have to be people and some examples of this.

In the IAM Dashboard there are a list of 5 items in the Security Status section that when completed, will not only help secure your Amazon S3 service and its buckets, but your entire AWS account.

This Lecture details the first item listed in that section - Deleting your Root Access Keys.

You will learn what to do and why you are doing it.

By the end of this lecture you will know what an IAM Group is, how to create one & how it will benefit you and your s3 service.

This Lecture details the 'why' & 'how' of adding Users with zero permissions to Groups. This can be a huge time saver!

Also touched on in this Lecture is that these 'no-permissions' users do NOT have to be human.

This Lecture shows you how to activate the Multifactor Authentication feature. This is the last (kinda) green check mark in our IAM dashboards Security Status section. Not just that, but this also, and more importantly, adds that extra layer of security for your AWS account.

As I briefly mentioned in the Lecture on creating a User with Admin rights, there are a couple things this user still cannot do - even with Admin rights. One of these things is accessing the billing section.

So in this Lecture I'll show you what you need to do to add access to the billing console for your users with admin rights.

I even show you how to do the same for non-admin users - just not as detailed.

In a previous Lecture we created a new user in the IAM dashboard and while we were in the dashboard I showed you the login URL that is used by all new users you create.

In this Lecture I will show you how to customize that URL with your company name. Yes.. The Power Of Branding!

In a previous lectures we created a couple different User accounts. This lecture will demonstrate how to create a User account with limited access to your s3 account. Basically this User will have no permissions but can be added to groups that have permissions or as I'll show in the next few Lectures, different permissions (policies) can be added to it.

Example:

You hire someone to do some work for you then upload those files to a bucket in your s3 service. This lecture will show you how to set up a user with permissions to only 1 bucket and no other service in your AWS console.

I also include a copy & paste version of the Bucket Policy I demonstrated in this lecture. The copy & paste file is in a PDF listed in the Resource section of this Lecture

In the previous Lecture we created a 'blank-slate' User with zero permissions or no attached policies.

This Lecture will show you how to apply the copy & paste policy that is in the Resource Section of that previous Lecture.

As shown in this Lecture, when you apply a policy you can use either the Visual Editor and manually create your policy or use the JSON and simply paste an existing policy into the editor window. This Lecture covers the JSON option.

The Visual Editor (Manual Creation) method is covered in the next Lecture.

This Lecture will show you how to create a single bucket access policy from scratch using the Visual Editor.

The end results will be the same as the previous Lecture where we Copy & Pasted the existing policy into  the JSON editor window. Only this time you will see how one is put together in case you want to do some customizing on this or other policies in the future.

Spoiler Alert! It works..,

This Lecture shows you how we are testing the policy we put together in the previous Lectures. We will use the 'blank-slate' User and log into the AWS Console and test that this user can access nothing except what the policy gives permissions for.

In this Lecture, we look at the Access Analyzer for S3 & IAM, and do a walk-through of what it does and why we need to use it.

In this Lecture we start where we left off at in the previous Lecture on exploring the Access Analyzer for S3 & IAM. Part 2 shows the 'How'. How to use the Analyzer, how to active it and what to do with the stuff it finds - if it finds anything.

This Lecture covers some extra goodies within the Access Analyzer - like Archive Rules and how to set them up as well as the Section titled Analyzer Details and everything it covers.

This lecture details the installation & setup of Cyberduck & connecting it to your AWS account.

Cyberduck is another 3rd party tool (User Interface) that connects your computer to your Amazon AWS account.

Cyberduck is like an FTP client that works with PCs & Macs and is FREE!

This lecture walks you through uploading & downloading files and folders within Cyberduck.

Editing live files, metadata & permissions are just a few of the file management features covered in this lecture.

This lecture shows you how to generate an expiring (pre-signed) URL & the big difference between doing this with Cyberduck and doing it with CB Explorer for s3 (besides the fact that Cyberduck works with Macs & CB S3 Explorer doesn't) is...

In this lecture we will use the User credentials created in the previous lecture and setup the CloudBerry Explorer for s3 & connect it to our AWS account.

This lecture provides a detailed look at using CB Explorer for s3 to create buckets and upload files (aka objects) to them. How to automate the process of deleting old files or moving them to “cold storage” as well as editing the files metadata, generating URLs and more.

In this lecture, I'm showing you how to create a pre-signed AKA expiring URL.

Also why you would want to create one.

You will see a feature unique to CB Explorer for s3 & I demonstrate using the expiring URL generated with CB Explorer for s3.

In this lecture I show you how to use the AWS Management console to do most all the managing of your objects (files & folders) including a trick on how to generate an expiring URL which most everyone will tell you cannot be done within AWS.

In this lecture I show you how to give your s3 buckets military grade security by encrypting the files using your AWS Management Console.

I also explain the difference between SSE & SSE-C and why the former is much easier than the latter.

In the previous lecture I detailed how to encrypt your s3 bucket files (objects) by using your AWS Management console.

In this lecture you will learn how to encrypt & decrypt your s3 bucket files using the 3rd party tools – CloudBerry Explorer for s3, Cyberduck & Bucket Explorer.

One of the main reasons some people use Amazon s3 is to store their video files so when people watch them, the streaming videos will not slow down the rest of the web site.

In this video you will learn step-by-step how to first prep your videos before even uploading them to your s3 bucket.

Then we'll generate the proper embed code to place on your static html page so the video will PLAY ON ALL BROWSERS.

Combine these steps with those detailed in the lecture on hot linking prevention for that added layer of secure video streaming.

Pretty much the same stuff as in the previous lecture (lecture 34) only this time we are posting the video on a WordPress site.

Everything used to prep, embed and play these videos are zero cost tools, free, zilch, zippo.

This is another way to secure your files.

Using Query String Authentication you can configure your images, pdfs & downloadable zip files to expire in a certain time frame but can be 'brought back to life' by simply refreshing the page.

Along with this video, I include the required file & a copy & paste code that I show you in the video.

These files are downloadable in the Resource Section.

Click on the 'View Resources' link in the top right corner of this lecture.

This lecture will detail how you can gain access to someone else's Amazon s3 bucket (on a different AWS account) so you can transfer objects back and forth between your bucket & theirs.

Example:

I've offered some clients of mine to copy the files from my s3 bucket to their s3 bucket INSTEAD of them downloading the files (the purchased) to their computer then uploading them to their s3 bucket. You can copy files this way at zero cost to your AWS account and it is super fast - 100s of Mbs in just seconds.

It makes for a great Customer support feature.

Masking your s3 URLs with cNames is what this lecture is all about. There are at least two reasons to use cNames to mask your s3 URLs.

1. Security

2. Branding

Both these reasons are detailed in this lecture as well as how to do it all. It's easy once you know how!

It is bad enough when someone steals your content. When they also steal your bandwidth (Hotlinking) AND your content it is a double slap in the face.

This lecture shows you step-by-step how to stop these bandwidth thieves dead in their tracks.

I include a copy & paste code you can use & show you how to use it in this lecture.

This lecture shows you the steps involved with setting up your static HTML website to be hosted on your s3 account.

Be sure and download the bucket policy for this Lecture. It is in the Resource section for this Lecture.