This post highlights hands-on labs that will help you get real-life experience building up Amazon S3 skills.

Hands. They’re awesome for playing rock-paper-scissors or making a totally unconvincing dog shadow puppet. But hands also are handy for learning cloud. How? With ACG’s Hands-on Labs.

Our Hands-on Labs are exercises that guide you through getting your hands cloudy in real-world situations worked through in real safe cloud environments. In this post, we’ll cover a mix of Hands-on Labs that will help you get hands-on with the skills you’ll need to get an introduction to Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service).

Get your hands cloudy

Learn by doing. Whether you’re new to tech or a seasoned pro, we put new skills within reach with hands-on learning.

Amazon S3 Introduction hands-on labs playlist

To get started with the hands-on labs below, you’ll need to have an ACG account. Don’t have an account? Don’t fret! Start a free trial and take the full hands-on ACG experience for a test drive for 7 days. Or create a free account — no credit card needed!

Some of these labs may available as part of our monthly rotating lineup of free courses and content.

Level: Practitioner
Number of labs: 5 labs
Time to complete: 3 hours

S3 is kind of a big deal. Amazon S3 runs on the world’s largest global cloud infrastructure and is designed from the ground up to deliver 99.999999999% durability. Some have gone so far as to proclaim S3 the greatest cloud service of all time.

Ready to get hands-on in a crash-course introduction to S3? Let’s get started!

Suggested Music Pairings

1. Intro to Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)

Duration: 30 minutes

Objectives:

• Create Public and Private Amazon S3 Buckets and Upload a File to Each
• Enable Versioning on the Public Bucket
• Validate Access to Different Versions of Files with the Same Name

Description: This hands-on lab will take you on a journey to start learning Amazon S3. During this lab, you’ll be using the AWS Management Console.

Logged into your ACG account? Start this lab here.

2. Create a Static Website Using Amazon S3

Duration: 30 minutes

Objectives:

• Create S3 Bucket
• Enable Static Website Hosting
• Apply Bucket Policy

Description: In this AWS hands-on lab, you’ll create and configure a simple static website. We’ll guide you through configuring the site with a custom error page. This will demonstrate how to create cost-efficient hosting for sites that consist of files like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, fonts, and images.

Are you already an ACG member? Start this lab here.

3. Creating a Basic Amazon S3 Lifecycle Policy

Duration: 30 minutes

Objectives:

• Create an S3 Bucket and Upload an Object
• Create a Lifecycle Policy

Description: Data often only needs to be accessed frequently for a short time. Once that time has passed, you may only hold onto the data just in case you need it again. This type of data can be archived, which is much more cost-effective than keeping it quickly accessible. AWS offers Glacier as a long-term archive storage service with lower costs. Data can be moved automatically between S3 storage classes using a lifecycle policy. Inthis hands-on lab, you’ll create a lifecycle policy.

ACG member? Start this lab now.

Watch: Automating AWS Cost Optimization
Using AWS cost-effectively can be a challenge. In this free, on-demand webinar, you’ll get an overview of AWS cost-optimization tools and strategies, like data storage optimization.

4. Securing Your S3 Bucket from A to Z

Duration: 75 minutes

Objectives:

• Update the IAM Policy
• Attach the IAM and S3 Bucket Policies
• Test and Verify the IAM and S3 Bucket Policies
• Enable Block Public Access in the S3 Bucket
• Configure CloudTrail and CloudWatch for SNS Event Notifications

Description: In this hands-on lab, you’ll implement S3 bucket policies and IAM policies to learn about the various ways to secure S3 buckets and the data within them. You’ll also see what services you can leverage to audit and remediate security issues.

Already an ACG member? Get hands-on here.

5. Advanced S3 Security Configuration

Duration: 90 minutes

Objectives:

• Investigate the Lab Environment
• Provide Appropriate Team and User Access
• Test Permissions

Description: In this hands-onlab, you’ll configure permissions for a provided S3 bucket to provide appropriate access to a team of users and a public prefix within the S3 bucket.

ACG member? Fire this lab up here.

Recommended next steps for learning more about S3

• Ready to take your S3 knowledge to the next level? Get a deep dive into S3 and learn all you need to know in this comprehensive S3 Masterclass! It takes you from S3 novice to guru within 9 hours.

• Keep up with all things AWS in our original series AWS This Week.

• From there, you might want to consider which AWS certification path is right for you. Certifications can help you accelerate your cloud career. You can check out some insights on top-paying cloud certifications and jobs.

• Not sure where to go next? Check out our learning paths for guidance on what to learn to keep advancing your AWS skills as you go from novice to guru.

Related resources

Check out our other hands-on labs playlists