/// CREATE A BUCKET / AMAZON S3

Create a Bucket — Amazon S3

New to AWS, or adding S3 to your stack? This page walks you through creating a bucket and a set of credentials on AWS, then connecting that bucket to storafleet as a Fleet — and, if you're migrating off another provider, pulling your existing data in afterward. The whole thing takes a few minutes and the bucket itself is free until you store data in it.

You can skip access keys entirely. When you connect the bucket, choose the keyless IAM Role method — storafleet assumes a cross-account role via AWS STS and never stores long-lived secrets. See Connect a Fleet for that flow. The access-key steps below are only needed if you specifically want to use keys.

Create an AWS account

If you don't already have one, create an AWS account first. Follow AWS's official guide, Getting started with an AWS account. New accounts qualify for the AWS Free Tier, which covers a generous amount of S3 storage and requests for the first months.

Once your account exists, do everything below as a normal IAM identity — never as the AWS account root user. AWS explicitly recommends against using root credentials for day-to-day work.

Create an S3 bucket

Screenshot: the create-bucket dialog — the name here becomes the Fleet's bucket.

A bucket is the container storafleet connects to as a Fleet. Create one from the console:

Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon S3 console at https://s3.console.aws.amazon.com/s3/.
In the navigation bar at the top of the page, choose the name of the currently displayed AWS Region, then pick the Region you want the bucket in. Choose one close to your users to minimize latency and cost.
In the left navigation pane, choose General purpose buckets, then choose Create bucket.
For Bucket name, enter a globally unique name (3–63 characters, lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens). Avoid putting anything sensitive in the name — it appears in object URLs.
Leave the defaults for the rest — Block Public Access on, ACLs disabled (Bucket owner enforced), and SSE-S3 encryption are all sensible. Then choose Create bucket.

After you create a bucket you cannot change its name or its Region — both are permanent. Pick them deliberately.

For the full reference, see AWS's official guide, Creating a general purpose bucket.

Create access credentials

Screenshot: the provider's key / secret confirmation screen — copy both values now (the secret is often shown only once).

If you're using the access-key method (rather than the keyless IAM Role above), create a dedicated IAM user scoped to just this bucket — never reuse root or a broadly privileged user. From the IAM console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/:

In the navigation pane choose Users → Create user, give it a name (for example storafleet-fleet), and do not grant console access — this user only needs programmatic access.
On the permissions step, attach a least-privilege inline policy granting only what storafleet needs on this one bucket:

s3:ListBucket, s3:GetBucketLocation — on the bucket itself, arn:aws:s3:::BUCKET
s3:GetObject, s3:PutObject, s3:DeleteObject — on the objects inside it, arn:aws:s3:::BUCKET/*

Finish creating the user, then open the user's Security credentials tab and choose Create access key. AWS returns an Access Key ID (for example AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE) and a Secret Access Key.

The Secret Access Key is shown only once, at creation time. Copy it somewhere safe immediately — if you lose it you must delete the key and create a new one.

For AWS's official reference, see Create an IAM user in your AWS account and Manage access keys for IAM users.

Find your region

storafleet needs the bucket's AWS Region to talk to it — for example us-east-1 (US East, N. Virginia) or eu-west-1 (Europe, Ireland). A bucket lives in exactly one Region, set at creation and never changed; objects never leave that Region unless you explicitly move them.

You can read the Region from the S3 console (it's shown next to the bucket and in the Region selector in the top navigation bar). For the full list of Region codes, see AWS's official Amazon S3 endpoints and quotas reference. You'll paste this exact Region code into storafleet when you connect the Fleet.

Connect it to storafleet

Screenshot: Storafleet's Create Fleet wizard with this provider selected and the endpoint + keys filled in — the step that unsticks a first-timer.

With the bucket created and either an IAM Role or access keys ready, head to Connect a Fleet. From the Fleet page, choose Create Fleet, give it a display name, enter the bucket name and the Region code from above, and pick your auth method — the keyless IAM Role (recommended) or your access keys. storafleet verifies the connection and you're live.

Migrating off another provider or another bucket? Once the Fleet is connected, follow the Migration guide to copy your existing data into this bucket — no need to route it through your own machine.

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