CloudBerry Lab Product blog

CloudBerry Backup - Intelligent Bandwidth Scheduler

2012-02-15T23:45:00.004-08:00

CloudBerry S3 Backup is a powerful Windows program that automate backup and restore processes to Amazon S3 cloud storage.

As always we are trying to make what works best for our customers and in the newer release we are introducing an intelligent bandwidth scheduler that that allows you to control the bandwidth throttling in real-time based on the time of the day and day of the week. With this feature for instance, you can set the backup to consume all available bandwidth during the off hours and on the weekends while consume only 10% of available bandwidth during the working hours allowing you to use the network for other tasks.

To create a Bandwidth Schedule go to Tools | Options| Bandwidth. Check Enable specific schedule and click Add button.

Schedule Option dialog box will open up where you can add an item for the schedule and define the bandwidth throttling settings.

As always we would be happy to hear your feedback and you are welcome to post a comment.

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Note: this post applies to CloudBerry Backup 2.7 and later.

CloudBerry Backup is a Windows program that leverages Amazon S3 storage. You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/backup. It comes with onetime fee of $29.99 (US) per copy.

CloudBerry Backup for WHS is a Windows Home Server add-in that leverages Amazon S3 storage. You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/whs. It comes with onetime fee of $29.99 (US) per copy.

CloudBerry Backup Server Edition. is a Windows program designed to run in server environment that leverages Amazon S3 storage. You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/server. It comes with onetime fee of $79.99 (US) per copy.

Like our products? Please help us spread the word about them. Learn here how to do it.

Want to get CloudBerry Backup for FREE? Make a blog post about us!

How to connect to network shares with CloudBerry S3 Explorer

2012-02-13T04:18:00.000-08:00

As always we are adding features to make it easier for our customers to use the functionality to offer the most compelling Amazon S3 , CloudFront and IAM client on Windows platform.

In this release we are adding an option to connect to the remote file shares (network location). just enter the UNC path to the navigation bar as shown on the screen below. if your current network credentials don't have access to the share CloudBerry Explorer will display the log in dialog box. If you enter the valid credentials you will be able to work with the file share just like with the local disk.

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Note: this post applies to CloudBerry Explorer 3.2.4 and later.

As always we would be happy to hear your feedback and you are welcome to post a comment.

CloudBerry S3 Explorer is a Windows freeware product that helps managing Amazon S3 storage and CloudFront . You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/free

CloudBerry S3 Explorer PRO is a Windows program that helps managing Amazon S3 storage and CloudFront . You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/pro It is priced at $39.99

Like our products? Please help us spread the word about them. Learn here how to do it.

Want to get CloudBerry Explorer PRO for FREE? Make a blog post about us!

How to sign-up for Amazon S3 and CloudBerry Backup

2012-02-10T00:22:00.000-08:00

This post will focus on CloudBerry Online Backup in hope that this product will become your tool of choice for automating backup and restore processes. I am going to show you how easy it is s to sign-up for Amazon S3 account and register it with CloudBerry Backup.
Just remember, signing up for Amazon S3 is a two-step process. First you should create an Amazon account. Second you have to sign-up for S3 service. If you ever bought a book or any other goods on Amazon you should have that account already and you can safely skip the first step and move to the second.

How to create Amazon account

Go to http://aws.amazon.com/ website and click the link at the very top right corner of the screen.

This will take you to the next screen, where you can create a new account or use your existing Amazon account.

This will take you to the next step, where you confirm your email and specify your password

This will take you to the next step where you have to fill in your address information and accept a license agreement.

Then you’ll need to get through Identity Verification by Telephone. This will not take longer than a minute or two. Just enter you real telephone number and you’ll receive a call. You’ll be asked to enter pin code displayed on your monitor.

As soon as you finish this stage you’ll be forwarded to the last step with email verification.

After that you’ll need to activate your account by following the link in the email send to you by Amazon. Follow the link and you will see your “Access Credentials”. The data you will need in future is:
- Access Key ID
- Secret Access Key

By now you are successfully signed-up for Amazon S3 service.

How to obtain CloudBerry Backup

Note: CloudBerry Backup is a Windows only tool. If you are working on other platforms you will have to search for other tools.
Go to http://www.cloudberrylab.com/backup and click Download Trial.

Download, install the product and run it.
Now you have to tell CloudBerry Backup your S3 account. Run CloudBerry Backup and click Backup Wizard button on the toolbar as shown on the screen.

Create Backup Plan Wizard will come up. Just skip the welcome step and move to the second step where you have to specify your account.

Choose Amazon S3 option and enter your Access Key ID and Secret Access Key.

How to get Access Identifiers

Access and Secret keys are also known as Access Identifiers and you can think of them as of your username and password. To get them go to the http://aws.amazon.com/ website and sign up for your account. Then choose “Security Credentials” option on the menu panel to the left.

And you’ll see your access credentials

Copy keys and past them in to the CloudBerry Backup Create Backup Plan Wizard screen. Once you enter your keys the Bucket name list will get enabled. If you have followed my instructions and just created an account you don’t have any buckets just yet and the list should be empty.
Note: if you are not familiar with Amazon S3 terms you can think of the bucket as of a top level folder.
If you had S3 account before the Bucket name list should show every bucket you created already.

I don’t have a bucket, so what?

For this particular case we have an option to create a bucket for you. The bucket name should be globally unique across all Amazon S3 accounts (kind of domain names). Check out Amazon S3 documentation if you want to learn more about bucket naming rules. Currently we suggest generated default name but you can change it to your own.

Click OK to create a bucket.
Note: you can always change your account settings later in the Files| Amazon S3 Account tab.
Now just go through the rest of the Wizard steps and create your backup plan.
Conclusion
CloudBerry Backup is a powerful program that automates your backup and restores processes. We advocate and idea that you should set and forget about it. However, setup process could be a little tricky even though we try to simplify it as much as possible.
Now you are ready to enjoy Amazon S3 with CloudBerry Backup, you can create Backup Plans, copy files to S3 and schedule the process. We wish you never need to use our restore functionality.
If you came here by chance and don’t have CloudBerry Backup yet you can download it a http://www.cloudberrylab.com/backup

CloudBerry Backup - Online Bandwidth Update; Local, Cloud Bandwidth

2012-02-03T07:00:00.000-08:00

CloudBerry S3 Backup is a powerful Windows program that automate backup and restore processes to Amazon S3 cloud storage.

In this release we are introducing two important enhancements when it comes to Bandwidth Throttling configuration. The first one is an ability to apply bandwidth settings online to the currently running backup plans and the second one is different bandwidth configuration for Local and Cloud bandwidth.

Online Bandwidth update

In the previous releases Bandwidth Throttling updates would only apply after you restart the backup plane. As always we are trying to make what works best for our customers and in the newer release we are introducing a feature that allows you to update the Bandwidth Throttling settings online while Backup Plan is running. With this feature you can decrease the available bandwidth when you need to use the network for other tasks and return it back to the previous level when you are done. For instance you may want the backup to consume all available bandwidth during the off hours and on the weekends while consume only 10% of available bandwidth during the working hours.

To update the Bandwidth configuration go to Tools | Options , Bandwidth tab. The changes will come into effect immediately.

Local/ Cloud Bandwidth

In the previous release you had a single bandwidth setting that would apply to all backup plans in regardless whether they are local or cloud. But when you do a local backup it makes a lot of sense to use all available bandwidth. On the other hand when you do the cloud backup you might want to use your internet connection for other tasks and limit the bandwidth.

We have addressed this limitation in the newer release and split the bandwidth configuration for local and cloud backup. We have added a separate tab called Bandwidth to the Options dialog for this purpose.

As always we would be happy to hear your feedback and you are welcome to post a comment.

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Note: this post applies to CloudBerry Backup 2.6.2 and later.

CloudBerry Backup is a Windows program that leverages Amazon S3 storage. You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/backup. It comes with onetime fee of $29.99 (US) per copy.

CloudBerry Backup for WHS is a Windows Home Server add-in that leverages Amazon S3 storage. You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/whs. It comes with onetime fee of $29.99 (US) per copy.

Like our products? Please help us spread the word about them. Learn here how to do it.

Want to get CloudBerry Backup for FREE? Make a blog post about us!

CloudBerry Backup : Block Level Backup - Scheduling Full Backup

2012-02-01T07:00:00.000-08:00

CloudBerry S3 Backup is a powerful Windows program that automate backup and restore processes to Amazon S3 cloud storage.

One of the things that were not very clear in the previous version is how to schedule full backup again. This might be necessary for the following reasons:

1. The total size of differential backups outgrow the size of the full backup.

2. To make for a more efficient restore so that you don't have to restore one year old full backup and then roll over a large number of differential backups

3. To make more efficient retention where you can purge older unnecessary differential backups after the new full backup is completed.

The newer version of CloudBerry Backup 2.6.2 comes with the ability to force schedule full backup. We have introduced an additional step called Block Level Backup

There are the options to run Full Backup periodically according to a schedule. There is also an option to force full backup if the total size of all differential backups is larger than a certain % of the last full.

We have also added an option to Force Full Backup to the Backup Plans tab so that you can quickly run full backup when necessary.

We hope this option help you keep your storage size more efficient and the restore process faster. As always we would be happy to hear your feedback and you are welcome to post a comment.

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Note: this post applies to CloudBerry Backup 2.6.2 and later.

CloudBerry Backup is a Windows program that leverages Amazon S3 storage. You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/backup. It comes with onetime fee of $29.99 (US) per copy.

CloudBerry Backup for WHS is a Windows Home Server add-in that leverages Amazon S3 storage. You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/whs. It comes with onetime fee of $29.99 (US) per copy.

Like our products? Please help us spread the word about them. Learn here how to do it.

Want to get CloudBerry Backup for FREE? Make a blog post about us!

CloudBerry Explorer for OpenStack and RackSpace with Http Header editor

2012-01-25T02:43:00.001-08:00

It's been just a few weeks since we released an updated version of CloudBerry Explorer for OpenStack Object Storage .

In this release we are adding an ability to edit Http Headers for files.

To run the Http Header Editor select a file and select Set Http Headers from the context menu.

The Http Headers dialog box will come us. With this tool you can see the list of all existing Http Headers, edit and remove headers and add the new ones.

What’s next

One thing that have been left over in the first release is that ability to configure RackSpace CDN. This is going to become available in the next release. As always we are going to gather user feedback and incorporate it into the product before final release.

In addition we are going to support self signed SSL certificates for those who roll out OpenStack Swift in their test environment

We are also going to implement a PowerShell interface for OpenStack Object Storage to help users automate their routine tasks.

There are even more exciting features coming. Stay tuned!

CloudBerry Explorer for OpenStack Freeware is a windows program, and you can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/free-openstack-storage-explorer.aspx

CloudBerry Explorer for OpenStack PRO $39,99 is a windows program and you can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/openstack-storage-explorer-pro.aspx

Like our products? Please help us spread the word about them. Learn here how to do it.

CloudBerry Backup Web Access - Updated

2012-01-22T10:31:00.000-08:00

CloudBerry S3 Backup is a powerful Windows program that automate backup and restore processes to Amazon S3 cloud storage.

We have been running CloudBerry Backup Web Access for quite some time and it has become a fairly popular way to access backup storage from all over the places where you don't have access to the local backup client.

We have recently updated the Web Access to make it more clean and easier to use.

With CloudBerry Backup Web Interface you can

Access your backup storage everywhere from a computer with the internet access
Login with the OpenID such as Google or Yahoo.
Access your backup data across all your computers.
Download the files
View file properties
View file versions
Share the files.

Here is a few screenshot to depict main functionality.

Sign In. you can sign in using any popular OpenID.

Enter AWS Access and Secret Keys. The keys are securely stored in our database.

Main interface

Select Buckets

File Properties

File Versions

Share the file

Note, you should already have CloudBerry Backup running to be able to use the Web Access. To get started simple follow the link below

http://online.cloudberrylab.com/

As always we would be happy to hear your feedback and you are welcome to post a comment.

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CloudBerry Backup is a Windows program that leverages Amazon S3 storage. You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/backup. It comes with onetime fee of $29.99 (US) per copy.

CloudBerry Backup for WHS is a Windows Home Server add-in that leverages Amazon S3 storage. You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/whs. It comes with onetime fee of $29.99 (US) per copy.

Want to get CloudBerry Backup for FREE? Make a blog post about us!

CloudBerry Explorer for OpenStack and RackSpace is updated

2012-01-18T08:52:00.001-08:00

It's been just a month since we released the first version of CloudBerry Explorer for OpenStack Object Storage .

In this release we are adding an ability to view object property, Http Headers (read-only) and correctly handling the folders.

To run the object property select a container, a folder or a file and select Properties from the context menu.

To view HTTP Headers select an object (file) and select View Http Headers from the context menu

What’s next

As always we are going to gather user feedback and incorporate it into the product over time.

One thing we are going to support self signed SSL certificates for those who roll out OpenStack Swift in their test environment .

Furthermore we are going to add an ability to edit object Http Headers and Metadata currently available in the read-only mode.

We are also going to implement a PowerShell interface for OpenStack Object Storage to help users automate their routine tasks.

There are even more exciting features coming. Stay tuned!

CloudBerry Explorer for OpenStack Freeware is a windows program, and you can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/free-openstack-storage-explorer.aspx

CloudBerry Explorer for OpenStack PRO $39,99 is a windows program and you can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/openstack-storage-explorer-pro.aspx

Like our products? Please help us spread the word about them. Learn here how to do it.

How to Edit Multiple Files with CloudBerry S3 Explorer directly from the Cloud

2012-01-17T09:56:00.001-08:00

As always we are adding features to make it easier for our customers to use the functionality to offer the most compelling Amazon S3 , CloudFront and IAM client on Windows platform.

In the previous release you could only edit a single files directly from the cloud. E.g. you double click the file and open an associate program to work with it. When you save it the updated version would go directly to the cloud storage. you could work this way with only one file.

In this release we are adding a feature that allows editing multiple files directly from the Cloud and save them to the Cloud. e.g. you can have multiple Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, etc open at the same time and when you save them the updated version gets uploaded to the cloud directly.

This feature lays the foundation for using Amazon S3 with CloudBerry Explorer as a document management solution. You can create IAM users, assign policies to work with specific buckets and files, then use CloudBerry Explorer to share the files within your organization.

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Note: this post applies to CloudBerry Explorer 3.2.2 and later.

As always we would be happy to hear your feedback and you are welcome to post a comment.

CloudBerry S3 Explorer is a Windows freeware product that helps managing Amazon S3 storage and CloudFront . You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/free

CloudBerry S3 Explorer PRO is a Windows program that helps managing Amazon S3 storage and CloudFront . You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/pro It is priced at $39.99

Like our products? Please help us spread the word about them. Learn here how to do it.

Want to get CloudBerry Explorer PRO for FREE? Make a blog post about us!

How to setup Object Expiration with CloudBerry S3 Explorer

2011-12-23T09:19:00.001-08:00

As always we are adding features to make it easier for our customers to use the functionality to offer the most compelling Amazon S3 , CloudFront and IAM client on Windows platform.

Object Expiration is a new Amazon S3 feature that can be used when there are objects within a bucket that have a predefined lifetime. On a bucket, a customer can define a set of rules that states given a prefix (or specific key) that the object(s) under this prefix should have a lifetime of a specified number of days.

New version of CloudBerry S3 Explorer comes with a full support for Object Expiration. To set up a new Object Expiration policy click on a bucket and select Object Expiration from the context menu

You can view the list of existing Object Expiration Policies in a bucket

you can create a new Object Expiration Policy by Clicking Add button. On the screen above we are creating a policy to delete the objects older than 20 days that are located in "files" folder.

You can also update and temporary disable the rules.

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Note: this post applies to CloudBerry Explorer 3.2.2 and later.

As always we would be happy to hear your feedback and you are welcome to post a comment.

CloudBerry S3 Explorer is a Windows freeware product that helps managing Amazon S3 storage and CloudFront . You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/free

CloudBerry S3 Explorer PRO is a Windows program that helps managing Amazon S3 storage and CloudFront . You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/pro It is priced at $39.99

Like our products? Please help us spread the word about them. Learn here how to do it.

Want to get CloudBerry Explorer PRO for FREE? Make a blog post about us!

Introducing CloudBerry Explorer for OpenStack and RackSpace

2011-12-21T12:49:00.000-08:00

We are increasing the breadth of cloud storage support and we are proud to announce CloudBerry Explorer for OpenStack Object Storage .

What is OpenStack?

OpenStack Object Storage (code-named Swift) is open source software for creating redundant, scalable object storage using clusters of standardized servers to store petabytes of accessible data. One of the most successful implementation of OpenStack storage is RackSpace CloudFiles

How CloudBerry Explorer supports OpenStack

First, you register your OpenStack Account.

Once you register your account you can do usual file operations such create folders, copy/move files between OpenStak Object Storage and your local computers. You can also copy files between two OpenStack accounts.

RackSpace support

To make it easier for the RackSpace users we have added an option to register RackSpace CloudFiles accounts. This is also important as CloudFiles come with some advanced functionality not available in the OpenStack core such as CDN support.

Features

Register and connect to any number of OpenStack accounts
Work with any number of OpenStack accounts simultaneously
Create, browse, and delete OpenStack files
Create, browse, and delete folders
Copy and move files between OpenStack and your local computer
Create Containers
List Containers
Update container metadata
Delete Containers
Upload/ Download files
Copy/ Move files
Delete files
Rename files
View files
Generate URL for files
View files properties
Copy/Move in background
Synchronize folders
Storage Capacity reports
Copy files from Windows Explorer
Remember user settings
Built-in feedback form
Automated check for updates

What’s next

We are also going to implement a PowerShell interface for OpenStack Object Storage to help users automate their routine tasks.

There are even more exciting features coming. Stay tuned!

CloudBerry Explorer for OpenStack Freeware is a windows program, and you can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/free-openstack-storage-explorer.aspx

Like our products? Please help us spread the word about them. Learn here how to do it.

Introducing Continuous Real-time Backup (CDP)

2011-12-17T01:04:00.000-08:00

CloudBerry S3 Backup is a powerful Windows program that automate backup and restore processes to Amazon S3 cloud storage.

As always we are trying to make what works best for our customers and in the newer release we are introducing a Real-time backup option which is also know in the industry as Continuous Data Protection (CDP). With this feature every change to the files will be captured automatically and you don't need to set up a separate schedule for the backup. The software will automatically look for new and modified files and send the copies to the cloud storage in the background.

To enable Real-time backup simple open Backup Wizard and go all the way to the Schedule step. On this step now you have an option to choose Real-time backup instead of the schedule.

Under the hood the changes are captured instantly but the data is uploaded to Cloud storage every 10 minutes. This is a default behavior and you can change that in the options.

As always we would be happy to hear your feedback and you are welcome to post a comment.

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Note: this post applies to CloudBerry Backup 2.6 and later.

CloudBerry Backup is a Windows program that leverages Amazon S3 storage. You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/backup. It comes with onetime fee of $29.99 (US) per copy.

CloudBerry Backup for WHS is a Windows Home Server add-in that leverages Amazon S3 storage. You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/whs. It comes with onetime fee of $29.99 (US) per copy.

Like our products? Please help us spread the word about them. Learn here how to do it.

Want to get CloudBerry Backup for FREE? Make a blog post about us!

CloudBerry Explorer: Announcing AWS Sao Paolo region support

2011-12-14T23:13:00.000-08:00

As always we are trying to stay on top of the new functionality offered by Amazon S3 to offer the most compelling Amazon S3 and CloudFront client on Windows platform. Following Amazon announcement on this release we are introducing the support for the new AWS South America (Sao Paolo) region support.

Now you have an option to create buckets in the new Sao Paolo (sa-east-1)region

Special note for CloudBerry Backup customers: New AWS region in Sao Paolo support is coming later this week.

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Note: this post applies to CloudBerry Explorer 3.2 and later.

As always we would be happy to hear your feedback and you are welcome to post a comment.

CloudBerry S3 Explorer is a Windows freeware product that helps managing Amazon S3 storage and CloudFront . You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/free

CloudBerry S3 Explorer PRO is a Windows program that helps managing Amazon S3 storage and CloudFront . You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/pro It is priced at $39.99

Like our products? Please help us spread the word about them. Learn here how to do it.

Want to get CloudBerry Explorer PRO for FREE? Make a blog post about us!

CloudBerry Explorer - Favorites

2011-12-10T09:07:00.000-08:00

As always we are adding features to make it easier for our customers to use the functionality to offer the most compelling Amazon S3 , CloudFront and IAM client on Windows platform.

With this release we are adding a feature that makes it easier to work with the folders and buckets you use on a regular basis. The feature is called Favorites and it remind the Favorites feature in the web browsers. You can select a certain bucket (with the path) and a certain folder to create a Favorites entry and then quickly navigate to it when needed. This is especially useful when you have many accounts with many buckets.

To create a Favorite entry click a Star button on the toolbar as shown on the screen below. you can optionally store a current folder in another pane by clicking Save target also checkbox.

To navigate to the Favorite folder or bucket just click the following button on the toolbar and select an entry you need from the list.

If you want to remove an entry just click the start button next to it and click Remove button in the pop-up dialog.

Note: In the freeware version of CloudBerry Explorer you can store up to 3 Favorites entry. In the PRO version it is unlimited.

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Note: this post applies to CloudBerry Explorer 3.2 and later.

As always we would be happy to hear your feedback and you are welcome to post a comment.

CloudBerry S3 Explorer is a Windows freeware product that helps managing Amazon S3 storage and CloudFront . You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/free

CloudBerry S3 Explorer PRO is a Windows program that helps managing Amazon S3 storage and CloudFront . You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/pro It is priced at $39.99

Like our products? Please help us spread the word about them. Learn here how to do it.

Want to get CloudBerry Explorer PRO for FREE? Make a blog post about us!

CloudBerry Explorer: Multi-Object Delete support

2011-12-07T20:28:00.000-08:00

Multi-Object Delete is a feature that Amazon S3 is launching to help customers who need to delete more than 1 object from their Amazon S3 bucket. The Multi-Object Delete enables users to specify up to 1000 objects to be deleted within a single request.

CloudBerry Explorer v 3.2 comes with a full support for Multi-Object Delete. There is no much changes in the user interface. Simply select multiple objects and click delete. A single request will get sent to the server rather than a number of requests making the whole process more efficient.

If you have more than 1000 objects to delete several batches will get created up to 1000 objects each. you can also delete a folder with files (objects) and other subfolders and even the whole bucket.

Special note for CloudBerry Backup customers: Multi Object Delete support is coming in the next release.

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Note: this post applies to CloudBerry Explorer 3.2 and later.

As always we would be happy to hear your feedback and you are welcome to post a comment.

CloudBerry S3 Explorer is a Windows freeware product that helps managing Amazon S3 storage and CloudFront . You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/free
CloudBerry S3 Explorer PRO is a Windows program that helps managing Amazon S3 storage and CloudFront . You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/pro It is priced at $39.99

Like our products? Please help us spread the word about them. Learn here how to do it.

Want to get CloudBerry Explorer PRO for FREE? Make a blog post about us!

How To Host a Static Website on S3

2011-11-22T02:29:00.000-08:00

This tutorial will give you a step by step instruction on how to host your static website on Amazon S3 and then map it to your existing or new domain.

Why to host website on Amazon S3.
If you already have a website, you probably deal with one of the hosting providers, which offers you a certain amount of server space with a limited bandwidth that your website can consume per month for a fixed fee. Every time your site exceeds the quota, it’s very likely you’ll be switched off and asked either to keep within the package or upgrade to more expensive one. With Amazon S3 you pay only for what you use. There is no limitations or minimal fee. You pay only for disk space and bandwidth your website consumes. You even can start using Amazon absolutely for free. You will get the first 5 GB of storage and 15GB of data transfer out each month for one year with no charge.
Learn more about this free offer and Amazon S3 pricing.

All you will need.
To host your website you will need Amazon S3 account and a freeware Amazon S3 client - Cloudberry S3 Explorer. If you don’t have your account or haven’t used any amazon s3 browser before, read our step-by-step instruction which will help you create s3 account and connect it to Cloudberry S3 Explorer.
Sign-up for Amazon S3 account
Download Free Cloudberry S3 Explorer

Get started.
After you get equipped with Amazon S3 account connected to Cloudberry S3 Explorer, you are ready to start. Just launch S3 Explorer and create a new bucket in the right hand part of the S3 file manager. Insure that the bucket you created has exactly the same name as your website. For instance, if you want to host http://www.mybrandnewsite.com, the bucket must have ‘mybrandnewsite.com’ name.

Now upload all your website pages with images, CSS and other files to the bucket, you’ve just created. You can do that by dragging & dropping files and folders from the left side pane to the right side or by selecting all files you want to copy and pressing F5.

Make S3 bucket public.
When you have all your webpages in the bucket you need to make it public. In other words, you need to allow any Internet user to access information stored in the bucket. There are two ways you can do that. The first one is ACL and the second is Bucket Policy. To open access to your bucket with ACL settings, you need to select your bucket and then click on “ACL Settings” button in the tool panel just above the list of buckets.

You will see the dialog box where you must choose “Public (everyone)” option and check the box “Apply for all subfolders and files”.

If you prefer Bucket Policy to grant read access to the bucket and all files and folders inside it, you must select the bucket and click on “Bucket Policy” button located on the toolbar. The advantage of using Bucket Policies is that it applies to all new files in the bucket automatically. It’s recommended to use only one of two options, either ACL settings or Bucket policy.

After you will click the “Bucket Policy” button you will see the dialog where you need to choose “Policy Script” folder and paste the script below:
{
"Version":"2008-10-17",
"Id":"http referer policy example",
"Statement":[
{
"Sid":"Allow get requests referred by www.mybrandnewsite.com, mybrandnewsite.com and IP address",
"Effect":"Allow",
"Principal":"*",
"Action":"s3:GetObject",
"Resource":"arn:aws:s3:::mybucket/*",
"Condition":{
  "StringLike":{
    "aws:Referer":[
      "http://www.mybrandnewsite.com/*",
      "http://mybrandnewsite.com/*",
          "http://***.***.***.***/*"

           ]
  }
}
}
]
}

IMPORTANT! You need to put your bucket name as well as website address and IP address instead of lines marked with red. The most important is that you insert your site addresses in aws:Referer element and your bucket name in resource element.

Prevent hotlinking.
Using of Bucket Policy will give you one more benefit. The following clause takes care of preventing hotlinking. Just replace the URLs and IP address with the ones related to your website:
"Condition":{
  "StringLike":{
    "aws:Referer":[
      "http://www.mybrandnewsite.com/*",
      "http://mybrandnewsite.com/*",
          "http://***.***.***.***/*"

Turn your bucket into a website.
The last thing you should do is enable website function for the bucket. To do this, right click on your bucket and choose “Website”. You will see the dialog box in which you should put mark on “Turn on Website” and enter page names for index.html and error.html documents.

Now your S3 bucket can be accessed as the website by typing in web browser URL that was automatically generated. In my case it looks like http://mybrandnewsite.com.s3-website-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/. Here is how the URL is formed http://<bucketname>.s3-website-<region-endpoint>.amazonaws.com.

You need to put your bucket name instead of <backetname> and a region endpoint instead of <region-endpoint>. If you don’t know the region you can find it in the bucket properties in Cloudberry Explorer. Right click on the bucket and choose “Properties”. Region of you bucket location is the second line of the list.

Then check what address you need in the box below and you will get the generated web URL of your bucket. Don’t forget to check if the URL you’ve compiled is actually working. Just paste it in your browser and if your website appears, everything is fine, if not try to make the URL once more.

The regions and their endpoints:
US Standard : s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com
US West (Northern California) : s3-website-us-west-1.amazonaws.com
EU (Ireland) : s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com
Singapore ( Asia Pacific ) : s3-website-ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com
Tokyo ( Asia Pacific ) : s3-website-ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com

Map S3 bucket to your domain.
The last step is to get rid of the ugly URL generated by Amazon and map your S3 bucket to the domain you want Internet users find your website at. It is also quite easy to do. All you have to do is to configure appropriate CNAME in your hosting provider control panel. All hosting provider offers a way to create CNAMEs and you will just have to find out the details. To create a CNAME record you will have to specify an alias which is URL Amazon S3 generated for your bucket.

You will probably have to wait for a while before the changes will affect.

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As always we would be happy to hear your feedback and you are welcome to post a comment.

CloudBerry S3 Explorer is a Windows freeware product that helps managing Amazon S3 storage and CloudFront . You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/free

CloudBerry S3 Explorer PRO is a Windows program that helps managing Amazon S3 storage and CloudFront . You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/pro It is priced at $39.99

Like our products? Please help us spread the word about them. Learn here how to do it.

Want to get CloudBerry Explorer PRO for FREE? Make a blog post about us!

Get Started with Amazon S3

2011-11-18T10:00:00.000-08:00

Starting with Amazon S3? This guide will help you to understand how to utilize Amazon S3 and what benefits you can get when storing your files on the cloud. The main factor that drives more and more people to Amazon S3 is very attractive prices and principle ‘pay for what you use’. That means you pay only for the storage and bandwidth you or your web-site/blog consumes. The other benefit is that hosting media files on the cloud make them load much faster and the storage is designed to provide “99.99% durability and 99.99% availability of stored objects over a given year”, that means Amazon S3 almost guarantee 24/7 objects accessibility. And the last ‘killing’ argument - you can start using Amazon S3 right now and absolutely for free. Just after you sign up you will receive (1) 5 GB of storage space and (2) 15GB of data transfer out each month for one year. Isn’t that the true value you’ve been seeking for? Learn more about Amazon S3 and free offer on their official web-site.

There are also a bunch of technical benefits you can get from Amazon S3. If you have your own blog or web-site you will be surprised when you discover how simple media uploading, backup and restore processes are with Amazon S3. You will also like how easily you can manage all your downloadable files and external scripts.

So lets get started. I will give you a step-by-step instruction on how to start with Amazon S3 and leverage it to host your personal and web data. You will understand how to:
- Set up an Amazon S3 Account
- Find all necessary account data
- Upload and structure data
- Setup public ‘read’ access
- Secure files from hotlinking
- Connect uploaded files with web pages

First of all go to the Amazon Services Sign In Form, fill in your email address and proceed by clicking on Sign In button.

Then you’ll be asked to fill in your credentials, contact information and credit card details. After that you’ll need to activate your account by following the link in the email send to you by Amazon. Follow the link and you will see your “Access Credentials”. The data you will need in future is:
- Access Key ID
- Secret Access Key

Now is the time to connect your account to the file manager and upload files to the cloud. To make navigation and data management process easier and more convenient I use the freeware tool developed for Windows and called CloudBerry S3 Explorer. It is designed in a side-by-side file windows style, similar to most of FTP file managers and has a user-friendly interface with a lot of additional features that is not presented in the standard web-based UI. Download the latest version of this free amazon S3 client and I will explain how to connect your account and start data upload. Don’t be confused by the differences in the interface you may see on the screenshots below, that is because I’m using Pro version which has slightly different set of tools and features. Learn more about S3 Explorer Pro edition.

To setup your account in the S3 Explorer go to the File menu, click on the very first tab - “Amazon S3 Accounts” and you will see Account Registration dialog. Choose “New Account” there or click on the “Add” button.

Enter any display name you want, but ensure you insert the correct Access key and Secret key for the account you’ve created earlier. You can test if the keys you’ve entered are correct by clicking on “Test Connection” button. If the test has been successfully passed, click “OK” button.

Voilà! Your account is now connected.

Managing files and folders in Amazon S3 is as easy as on your local hard drive, but instead of drives S3 has buckets. Therefore you need to create bucket first. In the S3 Explorer you will see window split. In the left panel (lets call it “local pane”) you can see you local hard drive(s) and the right panel (“cloud pane” is nice name for that one) is for the cloud. Just click on New Bucket button on the toolbar in the ‘cloud pane’.

Enter bucket name in the dialog that popped up. Take into account that Amazon S3 has one name-space for all bucket names, that means you need to create a unique name that no one else has took up before you. Also you can choose the region where your bucket will be stored. Learn more about Amazon regions and how to choose the right one.

After your bucket is created you can upload files there. Open the bucket in ‘cloud pane’ and choose files you want to upload in the ‘local pane’. Select those files and click either “Move” or “Copy” button on the toolbar or simply drag and drop them to the ‘cloud pane’ (F5 will also work for copy). You must see files appeared in the ‘cloud pane’. You can structure your files in Amazon S3 the same way you do on your local hard drive - create folders and sub-folders and allocate files among them. Here is the picture of couple buckets in CloudBerry S3 Explorer.

When we have files on the cloud, we can connect them to a website or a blogpost. To do that we need to set access permissions for the bucket where files for public access are stored. Always think of what files you want to grant public access to and store them in the bucket with public access, but keep your personal data that you don’t want to disclose in the bucket with private access (all new buckets have “private access” only).

Now I will explain how to grant public access to the bucket. Choose the bucket you want to open to public and click on the “bucket policy” button located at the ‘cloud side’ tool bar. The advantage of using Bucket Policies is that it applies to all new files in the bucket automatically. That means you have to set the policy only once.
You will see “Policy Script” dialog where you must paste the script below, that will grant “read” public access to your bucket and prevent hotlinking of your media assets. As I mentioned earlier, the advantage of Bucket Policies is that it applies to all new files in the bucket automatically. The script to put in “Policy Script” dialog:
{
"Version":"2008-10-17",
"Id":"http referer policy example",
"Statement":[
{
"Sid":"Allow get requests referred by www.mybrandnewsite.com, mybrandnewsite.com and IP address",
"Effect":"Allow",
"Principal":"*",
"Action":"s3:GetObject",
"Resource":"arn:aws:s3:::mybucket/*",
"Condition":{
"StringLike":{
"aws:Referer":[
"http://www.mybrandnewsite.com/*",
"http://mybrandnewsite.com/*",
"http://***.***.***.***/*"

]
}
}
}
]
}

IMPORTANT! You need to put your bucket name as well as website address and IP address instead of lines marked with red. The most important is that you insert your site addresses in aws:Referer element and your bucket name in resource element.

Now, when you have all your assets protected from hotlinking in the bucket with public ”read” policies set, the last step is generate URL’s that you can insert in your blog post or website content. Cloudberry Explorer can do that in a blink of an eye. Select file or a bunch of files you want to generate URL’s for and click on “web URL” button on the toolbar.

The dialog with URL or a list of URLs will pop up. Just copy the URL you need and use it in your blogpost or website.

Now you can upload with CloudBerry S3 Explorer new files directly to the bucket and generate URLs. All policies and restrictions will be automatically applied for all new objects.

Conclusion
In this article I gave a detailed description on how to set Amazon S3 account, upload, structure and manage files inside S3 buckets. I also described how to use Policy Designer to set up access permissions to your files and prevent hotlinking as well as how to generate web URLs for you media files.

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As always we would be happy to hear your feedback and you are welcome to post a comment.

CloudBerry S3 Explorer is a Windows freeware product that helps managing Amazon S3 storage and CloudFront . You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/free

CloudBerry S3 Explorer PRO is a Windows program that helps managing Amazon S3 storage and CloudFront . You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/pro It is priced at $39.99

Like our products? Please help us spread the word about them. Learn here how to do it.

Want to get CloudBerry Explorer PRO for FREE? Make a blog post about us!

Using AWS GovCloud with CloudBerry Backup

2011-11-15T10:00:00.000-08:00

CloudBerry S3 Backup is a powerful Windows program that automate backup and restore processes to Amazon S3 cloud storage.

AWS GovCloud, a new AWS Region designed to allow U.S. government agencies and contractors to move more sensitive workloads into the cloud by addressing their specific regulatory and compliance requirements. The newer version of CloudBerry S3 Backup comes with a full support for the AWS GovCloud.

If you have an access to GovCloud make sure to turn on an appropriate option on the account configuration screen in Advanced settings so that CloudBerry Backup use an appropriate endpoint to connect to the GovCloud

As always we would be happy to hear your feedback and you are welcome to post a comment.

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Note: this post applies to CloudBerry Backup 2.5 and later.

CloudBerry Backup is a Windows program that leverages Amazon S3 storage. You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/backup. It comes with onetime fee of $29.99 (US) per copy.

CloudBerry Backup for WHS is a Windows Home Server add-in that leverages Amazon S3 storage. You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/whs. It comes with onetime fee of $29.99 (US) per copy.

Configure Amazon S3 Server Side Encryption (SSE)with CloudBerry Backup

2011-11-13T10:00:00.000-08:00

CloudBerry S3 Backup is a powerful Windows program that automate backup and restore processes to Amazon S3 cloud storage.

Amazon has recently added a feature that helps encrypt the object on the server side. Amazon S3 Server Side Encryption (SSE) provides you the ability to encrypt data stored at rest in Amazon S3. With Amazon S3 SSE, you can encrypt data on upload simply by adding an additional request header when writing the object to Amazon S3. Decryption happens automatically when data is retrieved.

Newer version of CloudBerry S3 Backup comes with a full support for Amazon S3 Server Side Encryption.

You can configure the SSE on the Compression and Encryption step of Backup Wizard:

Note: you can use SSE in addition to CloudBerry client side encryption or instead of it. Furthermore you can use SSE in the Simple Mode.

As always we would be happy to hear your feedback and you are welcome to post a comment.

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Note: this post applies to CloudBerry Backup 2.5 and later.

CloudBerry Backup is a Windows program that leverages Amazon S3 storage. You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/backup. It comes with onetime fee of $29.99 (US) per copy.

CloudBerry Backup for WHS is a Windows Home Server add-in that leverages Amazon S3 storage. You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/whs. It comes with onetime fee of $29.99 (US) per copy.

Like our products? Please help us spread the word about them. Learn here how to do it.

Want to get CloudBerry Backup for FREE? Make a blog post about us!

Local Backup with Block Level, Encryption, Compression, Versioning

2011-11-11T02:00:00.000-08:00

CloudBerry S3 Backup is a powerful Windows program that automate backup and restore processes to Amazon S3 cloud storage.

New version of CloudBerry Backup 2.5 comes with an ability to backup data to local storage such as local disks, network shares and NAS devices. While the previous version of CloudBerry Backup had some basic support for local backup, with the newer version the users can take advantage of all product functionality available for cloud backup including block level differential backup, data encryption, data compression and data versioning.

CloudBerry Backup 2.5 lays the foundation for a full hybrid cloud backup implementation. The users can decide what data to store locally for high availability and what data to store in remote locations such as Amazon S3 and Windows Azure.

Local backup

With this feature you can backup data to local disks, SAN, NAS and remote file shares. This is useful if you like to backup only subset of your data to the cloud for advanced protection but also like to keep your data locally for fast access and reduced costs.

There is a new account type called File System Storage account and you have an option to choose it on the Backup Wizard dialog.

All you have to do is to specify the path to the folder where you want the backup created.

Everything else will work just like with any other storage provider. you can choose the Advanced Mode with the Block Level Backup option

you can configure Purge options and how many versions to keep

you can configure Compression and Encryption

As always we would be happy to hear your feedback and you are welcome to post a comment.

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Note: this post applies to CloudBerry Backup 2.5 and later.

CloudBerry Backup is a Windows program that leverages Amazon S3 storage. You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/backup. It comes with onetime fee of $29.99 (US) per copy.

CloudBerry Backup for WHS is a Windows Home Server add-in that leverages Amazon S3 storage. You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/whs. It comes with onetime fee of $29.99 (US) per copy.

Using AWS GovCloud with CloudBerry Explorer

2011-11-09T23:58:00.000-08:00

As always we are trying to stay on top of the new functionality offered by Amazon S3 to offer the most compelling Amazon S3 and CloudFront client on Windows platform.

AWS GovCloud, a new AWS Region designed to allow U.S. government agencies and contractors to move more sensitive workloads into the cloud by addressing their specific regulatory and compliance requirements. The newer version of CloudBerry S3 Explorer comes with a full support for the AWS GovCloud.

If you have an access to GovCloud make sure to turn on an appropriate option on the account configuration screen so that CloudBerry Explorer use an appropriate endpoint to connect to the GovCloud

Other than that the rest of the functionality is identical to other AWS regions.

As always we would be happy to hear your feedback and you are welcome to post a comment.

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Note: this post applies to CloudBerry Explorer 3.1 and later.

As always we would be happy to hear your feedback and you are welcome to post a comment.

CloudBerry S3 Explorer is a Windows freeware product that helps managing Amazon S3 storage and CloudFront . You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/free

CloudBerry S3 Explorer PRO is a Windows program that helps managing Amazon S3 storage and CloudFront . You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/pro It is priced at $39.99

Like our products? Please help us spread the word about them. Learn here how to do it.

Want to get CloudBerry Explorer PRO for FREE? Make a blog post about us!

CloudBerry Explorer: Announcing AWS West (Oregon) region support

2011-11-08T23:39:00.000-08:00

Now you have an option to create buckets in the new Oregon region

Special note for CloudBerry Backup customers: New AWS region in Oregon support is coming later this week.

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Note: this post applies to CloudBerry Explorer 3.1 and later.

As always we would be happy to hear your feedback and you are welcome to post a comment.

CloudBerry S3 Explorer is a Windows freeware product that helps managing Amazon S3 storage and CloudFront . You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/free

CloudBerry S3 Explorer PRO is a Windows program that helps managing Amazon S3 storage and CloudFront . You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/pro It is priced at $39.99

Like our products? Please help us spread the word about them. Learn here how to do it.

Want to get CloudBerry Explorer PRO for FREE? Make a blog post about us!

How to use Amazon S3 Server Side Encryption with CloudBerry S3 Explorer

2011-10-18T09:38:00.000-07:00

As always we are adding features to make it easier for our customers to use the functionality to offer the most compelling Amazon S3 , CloudFront and IAM client on Windows platform.

Amazon has recently added a feature that helps encrypt the object on the server side. Amazon S3 Server Side Encryption (SSE) provides you with the ability to encrypt data stored at rest in Amazon S3. With Amazon S3 SSE, you can encrypt data on upload simply by adding an additional request header when writing the object to Amazon S3. Decryption happens automatically when data is retrieved.

Newer version of CloudBerry Explorer 3.0 comes with a full support for Amazon S3 Server Side Encryption. You can encrypt existing objects on the server by selecting the objects and choosing an appropriate item in the context menu. Using this option you can encrypt one objects, multiple objects or a whole bucket.

You can turn Server Side Encryption as a global option in the tools options and SSE will apply to all objects copied to Amazon S3. Note, you can still use CloudBerry Explorer client side encryption.

You can also select Server Side Encryption for the upload rule to apply for specific buckets and/or specific objects under specific conditions. Note, Upload Rules is a PRO only feature. Learn more about Upload Rules here.

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Note: this post applies to CloudBerry Explorer 3.0 and later.

As always we would be happy to hear your feedback and you are welcome to post a comment.

CloudBerry S3 Explorer is a Windows freeware product that helps managing Amazon S3 storage and CloudFront . You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/free

CloudBerry S3 Explorer PRO is a Windows program that helps managing Amazon S3 storage and CloudFront . You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/pro It is priced at $39.99

Like our products? Please help us spread the word about them. Learn here how to do it.

Want to get CloudBerry Explorer PRO for FREE? Make a blog post about us!

CloudBerry Online Backup: Introducing Block Level Backup for all files

2011-10-12T09:17:00.000-07:00

CloudBerry Online Backup is a powerful Windows program that automates backup and restore processes to Amazon S3 , Windows Azure, Google and other cloud storages. Cloudberry Backup is perfect for small and mid-sized businesses looking for simple and reliable online backup solution.

As always we are adding features to make it easier for our customers to use the functionality and the Block Level Backup has always been one of the sought after features. With the CloudBerry Backup release 2.3 we have added the functionality that would back up only the modified blocks of the files to the cloud storage making the overall backup process faster and more efficient. This feature had one serious limitation -you could only take advantage of it for files larger than 5GB.

With the new release v2.4 we are introducing Block Level Backup option for the files of any size. Moreover this feature comes with the ability to do encryption, compression and versioning which was also a limitation of the previous release.

Block Level Backup is useful if you want to backup large files such as SQL Server Backup files, MS Exchange Database, Outlook PST files and virtual machine images.

To use Block Level Backup for all size of files you should choose the Advanced Mode in the Backup Wizard. Also, check Use block level backup checkbox.

Results

Our tests show that when copying a VMware virtual machine images of ~2GB, the changed portion is only 10MB. it takes only 2.5 minutes to upload the delta.

Here is a copy of our backup status report:

Backup plan Advanced Diff VMWare Backup (WEB) run on 09/15/2011 05:00:02 COMPLETED


Product version:	2.4.0.31
Computer:	CBL-MAIN-HOST
Bucket:	<outbucketishere>
Duration:	00:02:29
Files scanned:	45
Data scanned:	20.72 GBytes
Files to backup:	1
Total file size:	1.85 GBytes
Data to backup (differential):	10.25 MBytes
Files copied:	1
Data copied:	10.25 MBytes

Note: as block level backup is a part of advanced mode you can't restore the files using other cloud storage clients and you have to stick to CloudBerry Tools. Once Amazon S3 team removes the 5GB limit from the API you will be able to take full advantage of block level backup in Simple Mode too

What's next

Special note to MBS customers. we are going to add block level backup functionality to the service this week.

As always we would be happy to hear your feedback and you are welcome to post a comment.

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Note: this post applies to CloudBerry Backup 2.4.1 and later.

CloudBerry Backup is a Windows program that leverages Amazon S3 storage. You can download it at http://backup.cloudberrylab.com/ . It comes with onetime fee of $29.99 (US) per copy.

CloudBerry Backup for WHS is a Windows Home Server add-in that leverages Amazon S3 storage. You can download it at http://whs.cloudberrylab.com/ . It comes with onetime fee of $29.99 (US) per copy.

CloudBerry Backup Server Edition. is a Windows program designed to run in server environment that leverages Amazon S3 storage. You can download it at http://server.cloudberrylab.com/ . It comes with onetime fee of $69.99 (US) per copy.

Like our products? Please help us spread the word about them. Learn here how to do it.

Want to get CloudBerry Backup for FREE? Make a blog post about us!

CloudBerry Explorer: Azure storage Analytics Log Viewer

2011-09-19T09:30:00.001-07:00

Just about a week ago we introduced CloudBerry Explorer for Azure Blob Storage the support for Azure Storage Analytics . In this follow up release we are introducing a Log Viewer. This is a simple tool that helps you look over the log file in a human readable format.

Windows Azure Storage Analytics offers you the ability to track, analyze, and debug your usage of storage. You can use this data to analyze storage usage to improve the design of your applications and their access patterns to Windows Azure Storage. Analytics data consists of:

· Logs - Provide trace of executed requests

· Metrics - Provide summary of key capacity and request statistics

How to use the Log Viewer

Click Analytics in the program menu and then View Log. Note, that first you would have to enable the logs and wait for the log files to start coming as you work with the Azure Storage. On the instruction how to enable the Logs refer to our previous blog post.

The log files will start downloading in the background and show up in the grid.

by default the log files show up for the current week, but you can scroll back with an easy to use data control

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Note: this post applies to CloudBerry Explorer for Azure 1.4.1 and later.

CloudBerry Azure Explorer is a Windows freeware product that helps managing Azure Blob Storage. You can download it at http://azure.cloudberrylab.com/

CloudBerry Azure Explorer PRO is a Windows program that helps managing Azure Blob Storage. You can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/default.aspx?page=explorer-azure-pro . It costs $39.99

Like our products? Please help us spread the word about them. Learn here how to do it.