A blog post describing work undertaken at UCL to try out a research data management lifecycle proposed by Amazon Web Services (AWS). The testing was conducted during 2025.Our tests looked at three emerging software tools (Starfish, FITFILE, and LibNova), considering how they might support a data lifecycle, from creation through to long‑term preservation. We designed an idealised workflow to mirror common biosciences research practices and ran structured, hands‑on workshops where a range of testers worked through scripted tasks with minimal vendor intervention. This allowed the team to assess usability, metadata handling, and how well each tool could fit into UCL’s mixed environment of cloud and on‑premise storage.