Connecting to Amazon S3 service

First, make sure your AWS user with S3 access permissions has an “Access key ID” created. You also have to know the “Secret access key”. Access keys are created and managed on Users page of IAM Management Console.

Start WinSCP. Login dialog will appear. On the dialog:

• Make sure New site node is selected.
• On the New site node, select Amazon S3 protocol.
• Enter your AWS user Access key ID and Secret access key
• Save your site settings using the Save button.
• Login using the Login button.

Once you are connected, you will see a list of your S3 buckets as “folders” in the root folder.

The Create directory command in the root folder in fact creates a new bucket.

You will not see buckets that were shared with you by another AWS user, in the root listing. To access such buckets, you have to specify /bucketname as an initial Remote directory, when setting up your S3 session. Similarly, when your access key does not have permissions to list buckets, you will need to specify the path to the desired bucket the same way. In scripting, you do that by appending the path to the bucket to a session URL: s3://accesskey:secretkey@s3.amazonaws.com/bucket/.

• Guide to uploading files to server;
• Guide to automating operations (including upload).