Connecting to AWS S3 Buckets

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I’ve been thinking through a couple of use case scenarios for how Nethserver can live in and interact with Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Apart from having Netserver run on an EC2 instance, another aspect which comes to mind is how Nethserver can interact with S3 Buckets.

NethServer can connect to and mount the S3 Bucket using the information located on the web https://tecadmin.net/mount-s3-bucket-centosrhel-ubuntu-using-s3fs/. Instructions vary slightly if Nethserver is running in an EC2 Instance and the instructions for this is located at https://www.bonusbits.com/wiki/HowTo:Mount_AWS_S3_Bucket_on_CentOS_EC2_Instance

AWS S3 Buckets can greatly assist or compliment the backup storage locations or even as a centralized storage area if you have multiple sites needing to share files.

With S3 Buckets, you only pay for the space you use in the S3 Bucket as well as for AWS Network traffic (the main bulk of which is chargeable when you download the data from the S3 Bucket).

You also get versioning on the files. By default, versioning is disabled, but it is very easily enabled in the AWS Console and this feature can simplify the backup process in certain scenarios if you need to keep multiple versions of files in your backup. The restore of a previous version of a file is a manual task, but not at all difficult (This feature/option completely nullifies and knocks the wind out of a Cryptol0cker scenario).

If one can mount the S3 Bucket as part of the FS, then an rsync command can easily sync the files up. A cron job can easily run a script which perform the mount, rsync and umount.

The backup option is one of the biggest uses that I can think off off-hand and there could be good uses too.

What are other people’s thoughts on this matter?