Hey everyone, welcome back to Cloud Architecture Interview Questions and Answers on Scenarios. I'm Arjun, and as always, I'm joined by Neha. Today, we're diving into something that, honestly, I wish I'd paid more attention to earlier in my career—real-time alerts for S3 deletions.Hi folks! Yeah, this is one of those things that sounds simple, but it can save you from a lot of headaches. I mean, S3 is so widely used, but people often forget how critical it is to know when something gets deleted—especially if it's accidental or, you know, not authorized.Exactly. I still remember this one time, early on, when I was working with a client who stored all their logs in S3. One day, a bunch of logs just vanished. No alerts, no idea who did it, and we only found out days later when we needed those logs for an audit. It was... well, let's just say, not my proudest moment. If we'd had real-time deletion alerts, we could've acted immediately.That’s such a common story, Arjun. And it’s not just about logs, right? Any critical data—if it disappears and you don’t know right away, you’re basically flying blind. That’s why S3 Event Notifications are so powerful. They let you detect delete operations as soon as they happen.Yeah, and the best part is, it’s not even that complicated to set up. You just enable event notifications for delete operations on your S3 bucket, and you’re already halfway there.Right, and once you have that, you can actually do something with those events. Which brings us to the next step—automation and alerting.So, let’s talk about how you actually get those alerts to your team. The classic way is to send the S3 event to an SNS topic. Then, you just subscribe your team members via email, and boom—instant notifications whenever something gets deleted.Yeah, and honestly, I love how SNS just works with email. No need for fancy integrations if you don’t want them. But, you know, doing this manually every time is a pain. That’s where Terraform comes in, right?Absolutely. I had this project during a big cloud migration, and we needed to set up deletion alerts for dozens of buckets. If we’d done it by hand, we’d probably still be at it! With Terraform, we just defined everything as code—S3 event notifications, SNS topics, subscriptions—and could roll it out everywhere in minutes. It saved us so much time, and it was way less error-prone.Yeah, and the repeatability is huge. If you ever need to spin up a new environment, you just run your Terraform scripts and you’re done. No more “wait, did I remember to add that notification?” moments.Exactly. And it’s not just about convenience. It’s about making sure you never miss a critical alert, no matter how many buckets you have or how often your environment changes.So, once you’ve got these real-time notifications in place, it really changes how you manage your cloud storage. You’re not just reacting to problems after the fact—you’re actually in control. If something gets deleted, you know right away, and you can respond before it becomes a bigger issue.Yeah, and from a security perspective, it’s a game changer. I’ve seen teams catch unauthorized deletions within minutes, just because they had these alerts set up. It’s like, suddenly you have this window into what’s happening in your storage, instead of just hoping for the best.And you know, it’s not just about S3. Once you get comfortable with this kind of automation, you can start thinking about other areas—like, maybe you want to track changes in IAM policies, or get alerts for unusual API activity. The same principles apply.Totally. The more transparency you build in, the less likely you are to get blindsided. And with tools like Terraform, it’s actually doable, even for big teams or complex environments.Alright, I think that’s a good place to wrap up for today. If you’re not already tracking S3 deletions in real time, now’s the time to start. And if you’re already doing it, maybe think about where else you can add this kind of visibility.Thanks for joining us, everyone! We’ll be back soon with more cloud architecture scenarios and practical tips. Arjun, always a pleasure chatting with you.Same here, Neha. Take care, everyone, and see you next time!

Episodes

S3 Deletion Alerts Made Easy