Amazon S3
From Aligni Wiki
Amazon S3 is an internet-based storage service provided by Amazon.com. S3 comes with no startup cost, no minimum usage, and is only billed for storage and bandwidth that you use.
Aligni allows you to store assets (files attached to parts, vendors, manufacturers, and so on) using your S3 account. All you need to do is sign up for S3 and provide Aligni access to part of your space.
Note: Coupling your account with Amazon S3 is completely optional. However, without S3 coupling, you will not be able to attach files to parts, etc.
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Bandwidth Usage
When you upload an asset to Aligni, the file is first transferred to our servers and then on to the Amazon S3 storage.
When you select to view an asset, Aligni will ask S3 for an authenticated URL. This authenticated URL is valid for 5 minutes and will automatically be destroyed after that time. Your browser will be redirected to that URL when you click on the link in Aligni. Amazon will then serve the asset directly to your browser.
Our Demo Bucket
We have granted public read access to the S3 bucket we use for the Aligni Demo Site (Consolidated Diversified). It is called "aligni_demo". You can view its contents from the S3 Firefox Organizer if you wish.
Configuring Aligni and S3
The steps below require that you provide Aligni with your Access Key ID or Secret Key. If sharing this information is a concern, see the Alternative Configuration below.
Step 1: Sign up for S3
If you do not already have an S3 account, you can sign up here: Amazon S3
Amazon simply requires that you provide credit card information to bill you for usage. There are no startup fees associated with the service.
Step 2: Configure Aligni
Login as administrator and go to the Site Configuration page from the homepage submenu. Next to the setting Amazon S3 Bucket Name, click on Setup Tool.
Within the setup tool, enter your Access Key ID and Secret Key. These are provided by Amazon when you enroll in their S3 service.
Choose a unique bucket name. Note that this name needs to be globally unique across S3. Therefore, you may want to choose something like "yourcompanyname_aligni". You won't need to type this name often, so it could just be a random jumble of letters and numbers.
Click Setup S3 Storage to complete the setup. At this point, Aligni will connect with the S3 service using your access information and create the bucket and grant the proper permissions to allow Aligni to use the bucket.
Step 3: Test the Connection
From the Site Configuration page you can click on Test Connection to test your Amazon S3 configuration. If you have any problems, you may want to download the S3 Firefox plugin or other third-party S3 tool to check out your setup.
Alternative Configuration
Step 1: Sign up for S3
If you do not already have an S3 account, you can sign up here: Amazon S3
Amazon simply requires that you provide credit card information to bill you for usage. There are no startup fees associated with the service.
Step 2: Download the S3 Firefox Organizer
S3 is an online web service and does not have any user interface. There are a number of user interfaces provided by third-parties. One such interface is the S3 Firefox Organizer.
This interface is actually an extension to the Firefox browser and is run within Firefox.
Step 3: Create a Bucket for Aligni
Perform this step in the S3 Firefox Organizer
S3 allows you to create up to 100 "buckets" per account. These buckets are essentially folders where you can store data objects. S3 allows you to assign permissions to each bucket independently. You will give Aligni full access to one of your buckets so that Aligni may create, read, and destroy objects within that bucket.
You can call your bucket anything you like, but it must be unique to all buckets (even on other people's accounts). Therefore, it is probably best to name it something rather unique. For example: "923810239.Aligni" The prefix can be just a random bunch of letters or numbers.
Step 4: Grant Access to Aligni
Perform this step in the S3 Firefox Organizer
Once you have created your bucket, select the bucket and click "Edit ACL" from the drop-down menu. At the bottom left of the window, select "Share" > "With User ID" and enter the Aligni Canonical ID:
04ebdfa3326e4ad2e796a9ef8f0f68d140f54170a00161951be4bfab5a0e5bdb
Finally, grant full control to this new share and click "Save" to keep the settings.
Step 5: Setup Aligni
In your Aligni Site Configuration, enter the name of your new bucket next to the setting for "Amazon S3 Bucket Name".
That's it! You should now be able to upload files to items in your Aligni database.
