Just a quick demo how to work with AWS LightSail. LightSail is AWS lightweight VPS at a fixed price point. You can install just the OS. You can choose either Amazon Linux or Ubuntu OS. If you prefer, you can install any of the several ready-made applications provided by AWS in conjunction with Bitnami. In this example, I installed Ubuntu and Apache just demonstrate how to easy it is to work with LightSail.
Cloud
Nextcloud
Nextcloud is the next generation open source file storage and file synching platform. It’s similar to Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. The main difference is that you run the software on your own server. This is a perfect solution if you’re worried about mass surveillance. It’s safe enough to place on the cloud. Better yet, you can run it on your local network at home. It behaves somewhat similar to a NAS (Network Attached Storage) but with a better web interface, and a few more apps.
In addition, you can install the client software on your Desktop (PC, MAC and Linux) or to any mobile device (iOS, Android and Windows). The clients automatically sync data to the server software that’s installed on a Linux server. Files can also be accessed using WebDav as well. It has an online office, a video chat feature and Outlook email integration, but I’m not really interested with those additional features. I use it primarily for storage and file synching only. It works great by the way.
Give Nextcloud a try.
Install S3cmd on Mac
Previously, I wrote about installing and accessing Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) from Ubuntu using s3cmd command line tool. Interestingly enough, the S3cmd command line tool is also available on the Mac, since MacOS is based on NeXT, which was based on BSD, which is a major variant of Unix. Anyways, you can install s3cmd on the Mac so you can access to Amazon S3 via the command line.
How to Install
$ sudo sudo python setup.py install |
Configure
$ s3cmd --configure |
The configuration will ask you to provide your access key and secret key. You can get those keys from your AWS account or your AWS administrator.
Once it’s configured and you have access to the S3, you can try the following commands.
# list the files $ s3cmd ls # get file sizes in human form $ s3cmd du -H s3://yourbucket # create a new bucket $ s3cmd mb s3://newbucket # put file into bucket $ s3cmd put filename.ext s3://bucket/folder # get file from bucket $ s3cmd get s3://yourbucket/yourfolder/yourfile # delete file from bucket $ s3cmd del s3://yourbucket/yourfolder/yourfile |
There are a lot more commands you can explore. Here’s the documentation.
Install S3cmd on Ubuntu
If you want to backup your Linux server to Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), you need to install a utility called S3cmd which allows you to interact with Amazon’s cloud storage service. You’ll be able to create s3 buckets, upload and retrieve files from your Linux server to the S3.
You can install S3cmd from Ubuntu.
sudo apt-get install s3cmd |
Next, you need to configure S3cmd using your S3 credentials. You’ll need an Access key and a Secret key from Amazon’s Security Credentials page which you can access from Amazon’s IAM Management Console.
sudo s3cmd --configure |
For details on how to fully implement S3cmd, please take a look at this article.
Cyberduck
If you’re looking for a S3 client, check out Cyberduck. It’s a free FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, S3 & OpenStack Swift browser for both Mac and Windows. I started using it primarily to access an Amazon S3 account. Just download the client and select Amazon S3 to access your account.
You will need an Access Key ID and your Secret Access Key for your S3 account. You can get that from the AWS Dashboard under IAM (Identity Access Management). Once you’re authenticated, you can access your files from within Cyberduck. Drag and drop to download and upload. Very simple and intuitive.