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Jayanth Dasari
Jayanth Dasari

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Day-37 Why I Spent Today Deep-Diving into Amazon S3

#devops #aws #learning #docker

Even in a world of Kubernetes and Serverless, the simple storage bucket remains the backbone of the cloud.

As I continue my journey in Cloud Computing and DevOps, it’s easy to get distracted by the shiny new tools — Docker containers, Kubernetes clusters, or complex CI/CD pipelines. But today, I decided to hit the brakes and go back to the absolute foundation of AWS: Simple Storage Service (S3).

With my sights set on the AWS Solutions Architect certification, I realized that “knowing” S3 isn’t enough. You have to understand the nuances. Here is a breakdown of what I refreshed today and why it matters.

  1. It’s More Than Just a Folder When I first started, I treated S3 like Google Drive. Today, I looked deeper into Storage Classes. Understanding the difference between S3 Standard, Intelligent-Tiering, and Glacier is crucial — not just for passing exams, but for actual cost optimization in the real world. As a future Cloud Engineer, saving a company money on storage bills is a superpower.

  2. Versioning is a Lifesaver I spent some time playing around with Bucket Versioning. In my previous Terraform projects, I used S3 to store state files (terraform.tfstate). Enabling versioning there isn't just a "nice to have"—it's a safety net. If a state file gets corrupted or deleted, versioning allows you to roll back. Today solidified why this should be a default setting for critical data.

  3. Security at the Bucket Level Finally, I reviewed Bucket Policies and ACLs (and why AWS recommends disabling ACLs nowadays!). Writing JSON policies to strictly control who can PutObject or GetObject is excellent practice for understanding IAM concepts.

The Verdict Refreshing S3 might not sound as “cool” as deploying a microservice, but strong foundations build stable architectures. Tomorrow, I plan to integrate this by trying to host a static website or managing a lifecycle policy via CLI.

Follow my journey as I build my way to the AWS Solutions Architect certification!
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dasari-jayanth-b32ab9367/

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