I've been backing up my Mac to the Amazon S3 cloud using Jungle Disk. Now that Mac is dead. Fine, my backups are on the cloud. So, I go to my other Mac and download Jungle Disk. It is a workgroup version of the software. When I run it it wants me to verify that I purchased the software. Well, when I first set up the Jungle Disk client some years ago there was a free client. I'd rather not pay for this unless there's no good alternative.
Next I login to my Amazon S3 Console. I have a bunch of buckets there which are impossible to navigate.
So, I google around for S3 browsers and find Cyberduck. I download and install that. When I run it it wants a server URL. At this point I'm stuck.
Is there a client that knows about the structure of backups in S3 that I can install on this other Mac to get to my backed up data?
After a couple of conversations with Jungle Disk support I was given this (undocumented) url:
https://downloads.jungledisk.com/jungledisk/JungleDiskDesktop3160.dmg
I've downloaded and installed the client, didn't have to pay anything, and I've gotten to my backed up data. Whew!
Sol got his stuff fixed. Sharing additional background for future readers. Jungle Disk uses the WebDAV standard to allow access through our web service layer. Depending on the version of Jungle Disk you're running we have a few different URLs you'll authenticate to. Ping our team at support.jungledisk.com and we'll get you setup.
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I'm trying to set up an S3 backup for my company's NAS (a QNAP TS-EC879U-RD), and I'm having some trouble. The NAS device itself has a much faster network connection than the computer that I'm using to upload (10Gb/s vs 1Gb/s), but it seems like every tool I explore has to move data through my computer first. I'm sure there must be a way to bypass this bottleneck, but I can't imagine what it is. Any help pointing me in the right direction would be much appreciated.
The only way to do this would be to have the NAS itself run the upload software. Otherwise, the data MUST be read from the NAS into your PC and then sent via the upload software to S3.
Think about it this way: What you're asking for is software that can see what files are on the NAS, then tell the NAS to upload the files through its network connection. If you could do this without having to install software on the NAS, then any software running on your PC (i.e., a virus) could tell the NAS to upload its data to some hacker's servers.
As such, either you need to have the software running on the NAS itself, which can then directly upload data to S3, or the upload software will need to suck the data from the NAS into your PC and then upload it to S3.
I would like to access my Amazon S3 buckets without third-party software, but simply through the WebDAV functionality available in most operating systems. Is there a way to do that ? It is important to me that no third-party software is required.
There's a number of ways to do this. I'm not sure about your situation, so here they are:
Option 1: Easiest: You can use a 3rd party "cloud gateway" provider, like http://storagemadeeasy.com/CloudDav/
Option 2: Set up your own "cloud gateway" server
Set up a dedicated server or virtual server to act as a gateway. Using Amazon's own EC2 would be a good choice.
Set up software that mounts S3 as a drive. Two I know of on Windows: (1) CloudBerry Drive http://www.cloudberrylab.com/ and (2) WebDrive (http://webdrive.com). For Linux, I have never done it, but you can try: https://github.com/s3fs-fuse/s3fs-fuse
Set up a webdav server like CrushFTP. (It comes to mind because it's stable and cheap and works on any OS.) Another option is IIS but I personally find it's harder to set up securely for webdav.
Set up a user in your WebDav server (ie CrushFTP or IIS) with access to the mapped S3 drive.
Possible snag: Assuming you're using Windows, to start your services automatically and have this work, you may need to set up both services to use the same Windows user account (Services->(Your Service)->[right-click]Properties->Log On tab). This is because the S3 mapping software might not map the S3 drive for all Windows users. Alternatively, you can use FireDaemon if you get stuck on this step to start the programs as a service all under the same username.
Other notes: I have experience using WebDrive under pretty heavy loads, and it seems to work well. Under tons of pounding (I'm talking thousands of files per hour being added to a 5 TB WebDrive) it started to crash Windows. But I'm not sure if you are going that far with it. Also, if you're using EC2, you may not have that issue since it was likely caused by a huge transfer queue in memory and EC2 will have faster transit to S3 and keep the queue smaller.
I finally gave up on this idea and today I use Rclone (https://rclone.org) to synchronize my files between AWS S3 and different computers. Rclone has the ability to mount remote storage on a local computer, but I don't use this feature. I simply use the copy and sync commands.
S3 does not support webdav, so you're out of luck!
Also, S3 does not support hierarchial name spaces, so you cant directly map a filesystem onto it
There is an example java project here for putting a webdav server over Amazon S3 - https://github.com/miltonio/milton-aws
I am looking for a "free" IaaS service as an alternative to EC2 which will let me SSH into a system with full user permissions (create/delete files, install services, libraries and applications from the repository).
Tried OpenShift but ended up leaving due to strict permission policy on the SSH. Heroku, dotCloud, CloudFoundry.com, Stackato are PaaS providers. Rackspace and Linode might have what I need but are not free.
Is my own home server or EC2 are the only two options that I have? For the curious, I want to deploy my entire .vim folder and .vimc file for development on the cloud from a computer when I am not at home.
It seems like you want something for free that is not provided anywhere for free. I know its a shame, but it is reasonable that companies would charge for such a thing. Given that you want it for free I am guessing that you don't need much power or anything large scale. In that case I would look into the cheaper end of Virtual Private servers or a micro instance on EC2. VPS servers start at around $20 a month and a micro server starts at $14. Of course for the microserver you will have to pay a little extra for bandwidth and probably and EBS volume. Additionally AWS offers a free tier which pretty much allows you to run a micro instance with EBS for the first year.
We are a very small mobile company (building an application for the iphone) and we are currently considering hosting services. We are currently leaning towards Amazon's hosting/web services. Accordingly, I have some questions:
1) Can I create an admin account on AWS and assign user accounts to developers that should have access to most (but not all) features.
2) Do we need to learn / use AWS APIs in the development of our product? I don't like the
idea of having to create hooks into a hosting service.
3) It looks like the pricing for AWS scales with usage. So, since we are in development and have only developers accessing the server right now, am I right that the cost will be quite low if anything?
4) How does AWS do version management? We have several developers scattered throughout the country. Each will need to checkout the the recent build from the server for development
on his local box. Basically, something like SVN. Is this possible?
5) I am guessing we need something like a dev, svn, and production server? Is this right? If so, how do I set this up and find out the associated costs?
6) We are considering a few database options, among them NoSQL and Neo4j - will we be able to do this using AWS? The server language will be Java.
Thanks for your time.
To answer your questions:
Yes, kind of. There is Identity and Access Management offered by AWS, but it's not the easiest solution to use. Having said that, it can allow you to lock down some of the access activities on an account so that you have some control over your users. I would say that AWS is still very much a single-user environment for server administrators.
You could get away using only the management console. Your use of scripting may only be required if you want to run batch or periodic activities (eg. take a snapshot of all machines at 2am every night).
Costs for EC2 are low, especially for the Micro machine sizes. But keep in mind that the idea of cloud computing is the availability of on-demand resources for short term use. If you run dev machines needlessly over night then you will still be paying! And if someone launches an Extra Large machine (or 30 machine instances) then you will suddenly find yourself with bigger bills than expected.
(5. and 6. as well) Amazon EC2 is really about issuing you the boxes. What you do thereafter is fully up to you. You can create snapshots daily of your machines, you can deploy SVN and noSQL etc. etc.
I've been seriously into EC2 for a while now, and lots of companies are starting to look at the idea you propose. There are benefits to giving staff on-demand compute power, without having to manage any infrastructure in-house. But I will re-iterate my first point that EC2 is very much a single-user, server administration environment, which doesn't lend itself to being used as a dev playground without additional tools. (Or at least it becomes a challenging task if you have several devs spread around in your company).
I own a business that helps companies use EC2 for dev/lab/playground type of environments. I won't directly flog it here, but will show a quick demo we just put on DropBox: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16347737/RequestEC2Machines.html Feel free to request a machine to see how adding process to EC2 can help meet your goals.
I run/develop a website using Amazon EC2 & SimpleDB and I have some comments for you on your questions
Hi.
We are a very small mobile company (building an application for the iphone) and we are currently considering hosting services. We are currently leaning towards Amazon's hosting/web services. Accordingly, I have some questions:
1) Can I create an admin account on
AWS and assign user accounts to
developers that should have access to
most (but not all) features.
In my experience, there doesn't seem to be a direct correspondence between Amazon users and users on a single instance. An instance's root account is connected to the amazon account indirectly through a key pair. Although, I must say that I haven't explored this question in detail.
2) Do we need to learn / use AWS APIs in the development of our product? I don't like the > idea of having to create hooks into a hosting service.
I manage everything through their web console and Eclipse IDE plugins. I've never had to touch the API yet for development and deployment.
3) It looks like the pricing for AWS scales with usage. So, since we are in
development and have only developers accessing the server right now, am
I right that the cost will be quite low if anything?
Micro instances cost the lowest and the cost is pretty good if you're just starting an instance for a couple of hours and then stopping it. I never think twice about starting a micro instance to try out something new
4) How does AWS do version management? We have several developers
scattered throughout the country. Each will need to checkout the the recent
build from the server for development on his local box. Basically, something like SVN.
Is this possible?
I haven't seen this feature being offered directly by Amazon. You can of course keep an instance always on for your repository with backups
5) I am guessing we need something like a dev, svn, and production server?
Is this right? If so, how do I set this up and find out the associated costs?
EC Pricing - http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/
Amazon Simple Monthly Calculator - http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html
6) We are considering a few database options, among them NoSQL and Neo4j -
will we be able to do this using AWS? The server language will be Java.
Amazon instances can be what you want them to be, hence you can either use a pre-configured ami to launch an instance or start off with a bare bones Ubuntu Server or Windows Server e.g. and build a system with what you want. You can then save the snapshot of that system to launch more in the future or to re-launch if your instance crashes
I've currently got a base Windows 2008 Server AMI that I created on Amazon EC2. I use it to create 20-30 EBS-based EC2 instances at a time for processing large amounts of data into PDFs for a client. However, once the data processing is complete, I have to manually connect to each machine and copy off the files. This takes a lot of time and effort, and so I'm trying to figure out the best way to use S3 as a centralised storage for the outputted PDF files.
I've seen a number of third party (commercial) utilities that can map S3 buckets to drives within Windows, but is there a better, more sensible way to achieve what I want? Having not used S3 before, only EC2, I'm not sure of what options are available, and I've not been able to find anything online addressing the issue of using S3 as centralised storage for multiple EC2 Windows instances.
Update: Thanks for suggestions of command line tools for using S3. Was hoping for something a little more integrated and less ad-hoc. Seeing as EC2 is closely related to S3 (S3 used to be the default storage mechanism for AMIs, etc), that there might be something neater/easier I could do. Perhaps even around Private Cloud Networks and EC2 backed S3 servers, etc, or something (an area I know nothing about). No other ideas?
I'd probably look for a command line tool. A quick search on Google lead me to a .Net tool:
http://s3.codeplex.com/
And a Java one:
http://www.beaconhill.com/opensource/s3cp.html
I'm sure there are others out there as well.
You could use an EC2 instance with EBS exported through samba which can act as a centralized storage that windows instances can map?
this sounds very much like a hadoop/Amazon MapReduce job to me. Unfortunately, hadoop is best deployed on Linux:
Hadoop on windows server
I assume the software you use for pdf-processing is Windows only?
If this is not the case, I'd seriously consider porting your solution to Linux.