Experimental: name your buckets anything

Oct 12, 2026 · Robert C. Sheets

Today, every bucket you create starts with your prefix: k3x9--photos, never just photos. We're trying out a way past that rule. A virtual namespace is an S3 endpoint of your own, where you can name your buckets anything S3 allows.

What you get

• Any bucket name. photos, backups, www.example.com: up to S3's full 63 characters, with no prefix in front.
• Names that are yours alone. Your namespace is separate from everyone else's, so your backups never collides with another customer's.
• No changes to your tools. Backup software, deploy scripts and app configs that expect a particular bucket name work as written. Moving in from another S3 service keeps your bucket names.
• The same storage underneath. Your data is stored and versioned exactly like the buckets you have today.

How to try it

1. Request access to the preview functionality through the Object Storage portal. If no option is available to you to request access yet, then your account is not yet eligible and you should check back tomorrow.
2. Ask for a namespace from the Object Storage page in the portal. You get an endpoint like https://q7m2c8vd.s3v.picote.ch.
3. Create a key for the namespace on the same page. Keys for your ordinary buckets don't work here, and these don't work there.
4. Point your tool at the endpoint with path-style addressing and region na-west, then create buckets with whatever names you like.

For example, with the AWS CLI:

aws --endpoint-url https://q7m2c8vd.s3v.picote.ch s3 mb s3://backups

What works, and what doesn't yet

• Works: creating, listing and deleting buckets; uploading, downloading, listing and deleting objects, including large multipart uploads; copying within your namespace; versioning, tags, CORS and lifecycle rules; presigned URLs; making a bucket publicly readable from the portal.
• Not yet: bucket-name-in-hostname addressing (backups.q7m2c8vd.s3v.picote.ch), bucket policies and ACLs, event notifications, static website hosting, and Object Lock.

It's an experiment

Virtual namespaces may change, have outages, or be withdrawn. If we end the experiment, we'll give notice and help you move your data into ordinary buckets. Nothing is lost: your data lives in the same store as everything else. Please don't make it the only home of anything critical just yet.

Tell us what works for you and what doesn't. Your feedback decides whether this becomes a permanent feature.

How it works · Object storage · picote.ch