Now CloudBuddy Personal supports EC2 too

Its really amazing to see another amazon service in CloudBuddy Personal. CloudBuddy Personal primarily being an S3 manager supported AWS Import / Export and Amazon CloudFront services. Now, it has taken a step forward to bring AWS EC2 into it. The latest addition of 'EC2 Dashboard plug-in' displays all available EC2 resources to the user. Though the market is flooded with many management consoles to manage AWS, the dashboard provided by CloudBuddy Personal is unique i.e., it provides a summarized view of all the resources such as instances, EBS volumes and their snapshots, security groups, key pairs, elastic IPs.


It eases the operation of a user managing multiple AWS accounts and helps him to efficiently manage each EC2 resources.

HOW EC2 DASHBOARD IS BEEN USEFUL:

The dashboard provides the flexibility in navigating between various accounts and helps to drill down to each EC2 resource. The home page with detailed summary of EC2 resources is real boon which provides a quick picture of an AWS account to user. The functionality of exporting the dashboard contents into a “CSV format” helps the user to generate graphical reports while presenting it to management.

The EC2 Dashboard home screen has the summary and detail summary screens.


The summary screen display

• Total number of instances grouped by type
• Total number of EBS volumes
• Total number of AMI's used (classified as public and private)
• Total count of ports opened
• Security groups
• Key-pairs
• Total number of Elastic IPs (segmented as mapped and unmapped

The detailed summary screen, on the other hand, displays region-wise split up of the EC2 resources.


So here the user get answers for on which region and how many EC2 resources etc. This screen concentrates on displaying the number of instances by grouping them by platform and instance type. It also provides a snapshot of available and used EBS volumes.

The tab provided on the left hand side of Dashboard, helps you to have a more drilled down information of AWS EC2 resources.

Hence CloudBuddy Personal EC2 Dashboard can be made used

• To manage multiple accounts easily
• To know complete information about the available resources of EC2 for each account
• To know used and unused resources for each account.

HOW CAN YOU INSTALL EC2 DASHBOARD:


You can go to the ‘Tools’ ---> ‘Plug-in-manager’ from your CloudBuddy personal to check out the plug-in is installed or not. If not you can upgrade yourself to CloudBuddy personal version 2.0.9.9 which provides the EC2 Dashboard plug-in by default. Download the latest version of CloudBuddy.



An alternate option to this is downloading the EC2 Dashboard plug-in. Follow the below provided steps:

1. Download EC2 Dashboard by clicking Download EC2Dashboard
2. Choose plug-in manager in tools menu from CloudBuddy Personal.
3. Plug-in manager window opens where you can select the path where you have the Dashboard zip file downloaded.
4. You see a message box that displays “the plug-in was installed successfully”
5. Now you can see the plug-in in you CloudBuddy Personal.

For more information you can follow this link Installation process


To know more about the EC2 Dashboard follow this link : EC2 Dashboard User manual

Hosting Static Website in Amazon S3 with Bucket Root Document configuration using CSS Corp CloudBuddy Personal

This blog aims in helping the cloud (AWS) user to host their static website in Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service).

The user need to follow the below provided steps, to be successful in hosting website in cloud.

Step 1: Create new Amazon Web Services account using the below provided URL  

            www.amazon.com/gp/aws/registration/registration-form.html

Step 2: Sign Up For Amazon S3

AWS provides several features to host static website and manage the data associated with it in Amazon S3. The user will also be able to configure a bucket in S3 as a website and server default index and error html documents.

If the user got a registered domain, he / she can add a DNS CNAME entry to point to the Amazon S3 website endpoint. For example, if the user got a registered domain, say, www.cloudbuddy-bucket.com, he / she could create a bucket www.cloudbuddy-bucket.com, and add a DNS CNAME entry pointing to www.cloudbuddy-bucket.com.s3-website-.amazonaws.com. All requests to http://www.cloudbuddy-bucket.com will be routed to www.cloudbuddy-bucket.com.s3-website-.amazonaws.com

CSS Corp CloudBuddy Personal helps the user to do all the operation that mentioned above. For more details about CloudBuddy Personal please refer www.mycloudbuddy.com and download latest version of CloudBuddy Personal.

After successful installation of CloudBuddy Personal, follow the steps provided below to configure the static website:

·         Launch CloudBuddy Personal

·         Add Amazon credentials to CloudBuddy Personal

·         Click on the S3Sites button

·         S3Site window will popup, using which user will be able to create websites

·         Select the website record and click sync button, which will result in successful hosting of website in S3.

For more details about S3Site plug-in please refer user manual

http://www.mycloudbuddy.com/s3sites/s3sites.html

CloudBuddy Personal Office

What is CSS CloudBuddy Personal Office?
CloudBuddy Personal Office is a add -in tightly coupled with CloudBuddy Personal product supporting the following in MS Office package:
• Microsoft Office Word
• Microsoft Office Excel
• Microsoft Office PowerPoint
• Microsoft office Outlook

The latest version of the CloudBuddy Personal Office add-in supports 2003, 2007 & 2010 versions of MS-Office.

How CloudBuddy Personal Office helps their user?
• Anytime, anywhere access to files and mails present in S3
• Allows storing of MS office files directly from MS Office interface
• Access to MS outlook backed up emails using email interface
• Serving attachments in mails via url’s associated with Amazon S3

How to install CloudBuddy Personal Office add-in?
Follow the steps provided below to install CloudBuddy MS Office add-in successfully
Step 1: Download and install the latest version of CloudBuddy Personal
Step 2: Download CloudBuddy Personal Office add-in, and install it
Step 3: Follow below steps to install add-in

How to use CloudBuddy Personal Office add-in?
On successful installation, the CloudBuddy Personal Toolbar will be visible in Add-Ins tab of MS Office package.

CloudBuddy Personal MS Office Add-in provides the following functionality:

S.No	Functionality	Description
1	Save	Helps in saving files directly into S3
2	Save As	Helps in saving files with different name in S3
3	Open	Helps in viewing the files directly from S3
4	Insert Hyperlink	Helps in attaching files as URL in another file
5	Share	Helps in sharing files via url’s (public / private)

(The above screenshots are specific to MS Word. It is applicable to MS Excel and MS PowerPoint)

CloudBuddy Personal add-in for “MS-Outlook”

On successful installation, the CloudBuddy Personal Toolbar will be visible in Add-Ins tab of MS Outlook.

CloudBuddy Personal MS Outlook Add-in provides the following functionality:

S.No	Functionality	Description
1	Save	Helps in saving mails directly into S3, which shall be viewed using mail view option provided by CloudBuddy Personal
2	Mail Explorer	Helps in selecting and saving mails in the local MS Outlook folder
3	Insert Hyperlink	Helps in attaching files as URL in a mail, thus entertaining users to attach mails exceeding the quota limits set by the mail administrator
4	Option of sending attachment as URL	Helps the user to attach files while composing a mail. While sending the mail, a pop-up will come up and helps the user to decide, whether attachment to be sent as a url (serving attachments from Amazon S3) or attachment itself. Please refer the screen shot below.

CloudBuddy has support for Jungle Disk Files

Here I am at CSS Labs, developing components for our very own CloudBuddy… Wonder what CloudBuddy is? Take a look at www.mycloudbuddy.com and I promise, you would want to have a go at it.

And what exactly am I going to write here? After thinking for quite some time, I decided that I could tell you about what CloudBuddy can do with Jungle Disk files…

Here we go… This one is interesting… Jungle Disk Support…

I was going through the users’ feedback on CloudBuddy… One Jungle Disk user had this problem of not being able to view the files that he had uploaded (using Jungle Disk) into S3 using other tools and he had raised an issue on whether this can be handled in CloudBuddy.

And I thought – Why not??

Jungle Disk website briefed me about what Jungle disk is all about, with their encrypted storage mechanism and stuff… And there I found that Jungle Disk gives us his decryption API… A very good gesture indeed…

So, I decided to have a look at the Jungle Disk Decryption API. C# Code, of course… I was just going through the code and believe me, it was Greek and Latin for me the first time I looked into it…

Of course, going through the code written by someone else is always a tough task… I was searching for answers on how I’m going to make it… And the solution was right in front of me… Jungle disk had given a sample application that uses his API!

And that was all that I needed… And the way CloudBuddy was programmed, it made my life all the more simpler… All I had to do is just build a file structure that both the Jungle Disk API and CloudBuddy can understand… Done!! That’s it… CloudBuddy has built-in support for viewing and downloading Jungle Disk files… :-) who else has??

Jungle Disk users, if you wish to try out CloudBuddy to view or download your Jungle Disk files, read on for the instructions…

JUNGLE DISK:

Jungle Disk creates only one bucket per location (US / EUROPE) per user. Hence the user can have utmost 2 buckets.

The 2 buckets are named by (possibly) prefixing “jd2-” and suffixing “-us” (or “-eu”) to the MD5 hash value of the access key provided by Amazon to the particular user.

For example, the 2 possible buckets for a user will look like this :

▪ jd2 - MD5 Hash value of your AWS Access Key - us
▪ jd2 - MD5 Hash value of your AWS Access Key - eu

jd2 – Jungle Disk Version 2
us – Location United States
eu – Location Europe

Jungle Disk considers either or both of the above buckets as Top-Level Buckets and allows us to create infinite number of Sub-Buckets (or Folders, to be more precise) under the Top-Level Buckets.

One important feature about Jungle Disk is that it provides the option of encryption of sub-buckets (folders) and files.

It gives us the option of whether or not a Sub-Bucket (Folder) must be password protected.

Jungle Disk creates a different architecture on how the Sub-Bucket's contents are organized based on whether the Sub-Bucket is password protected or not. And that's where CloudBuddy can make a difference

Here’s what CloudBuddy can do with your Jungle Disk files / folders…

• A view of Jungle Disk Buckets…
  
• A view of Jungle Disk files and folders…
  
• And here’s how CloudBuddy decrypts jungle disk files…
  

Cool… Isn’t it?... Try CloudBuddy… You'll love it:-)

CloudBuddy Analytics coming soon!

CloudBuddy Analytics is going to change the way you look at your S3 logs. Powered and Analyzed by AWStats, CloudBuddy Analytics will help see all your S3 Access Statistics in just a click of a button. Apart from the standard features of AWStats CloudBuddy Analytics bundles the following features.

* Faster reports, compared to any other out there.
* Multiple Account managements.
* User session maintainance.
* Powered Abyss Web Server and Strawberry Perl.
* Proven AWStats Engine.

You could preview CloudBuddy Analytics here

Microsoft Office --> Save --> On S3 !! CB MS Office Plug-in

True, CloudBuddy by default comes with plug-in for Microsoft Office and get's installed. Now with this feature, you would be able to Save your MS Office files directly to Amazon S3 and open files directly from Amazon S3.

MS Office plug-in has been with CloudBuddy for quiet sometime and it compatible with MS Office XP and MS Office 2007. The state-of-the-art architecture (that's how all of call our architecture!) of CloudBuddy makes it possible for us to write plug-in's for MS Office. I am sure that you now would be hinting about the so-called "State Of The Art" architecture, yes let me tell about that to you. CloudBuddy is desinged and developed to run as a windows service. Once our buddy is installed he starts running as a windows services, thereby offering the option for any client program to access the service and perform the operations that the serivce offers. Thou came up with a novel idea of creating plug-in's for MS Office and thus.

Now, if you are a CB user, you would be able to create documents and save it simultaneously in your local as well as on your cloud bucket!

Happy CB'ing.

Ciao,
CB Team

Is CloudBuddy really feature rich?

We, the CloudBuddy team claim that CloudBuddy is "A true Amazon S3 explorer platform". One of my colluge while over a sip of coffee started debating on the feature list of CloudBuddy. I immediatly did this analysis and wrote down the features what we offer via our buddy. Read the post below and let me know if you too concur with my comments.

1. Local Cache:- CloudBuddy has the option to cache your files during upload. This helps you to reduce the hits to the s3 server when the same files are downloaded. This is a setting that can be enabled/disabled and you need to specify the cache size limit when you enable it. This feature actually saves your time and also the money interms of bandwidth consumption.

2. Runs as a Windows Service:- Once installed, CloudBuddy registers itself and runs as a windows service. This allows you to exploit the entire set of operations / features that CloudBuddy offers by writing plug-in's for your windows client sofwares. One typical example is our MS Office Plugin, that comes as a part of CloudBuddy. By downloading the SDK, you should be able to write plug-in for Windows Media Player to play music / video directly from S3!

3. Configure Multiple S3 Accounts:- This is now there with every other tool, but from the day of S3Fish till CloudBuddy, we belong to the poineers group of having this functionality.

4. Sharing:- This is one cool feature where our team has exploited the offering by AWS towards sharing files. CloudBuddy allows you to share your contents in S3 as URL and Template. For example, you can select a Photo Album Template and share the uploaded photos as an album via the an URL. And this sharing can also be a private URL which expires within a certain time.

5. Share History:- You would be able to view the share history of each and every single object that you had shared via CloudBuddy. What do I get from this? You would be able to view the entire history of sharing a file as well as copy the existing share URL and use to share again rather an creating a new share.

6. File View Vs Mail View:- Now you don't need to download your mail files to the local and view it in your mail client. You can change the view mode from "File View" to "Mail View" from the toolbar menu and view your mails on S3 as you view in your local email client. And ofcourse, you need to download the attachements!

7. Sync to S3:- This feature enables me to keep my back-ups in S3 upto second! Yes, "second"!! I would be able to configure a local folder where I move by back-ups time to time and it automatically sync's the contents of the folder in local to S3 making me feel comfortable about my back-ups.

8. JungleDisk support:- If you were a JungleDisk user and now started with CloudBuddy, never mind about your JungleDisk buckets. CloudBuddy automatically detects a bucket if it was created and used with JungleDisk and with the help of APIs, CloudBuddy de-codes the content of the bucket and displays in the native file format. So, now porting from JungleDisk to CloudBuddy isn't a deal!

9. Drag and Drop:- Yes, you should be able to drag your files and drop it into CloudBuddy bucket explorer window to upload them!

10. Online Software Upgrade Notification:- And yes, we do notify you about our newer version and you should be able to update it online buddy!

And that's the stand-out features of CloudBuddy. Rest of the defacto features are there with CloudBuddy from the begninng. We are still working on a great looking UI and a innovative set of new features for CloudBuddy which we would release quite soon. Watch out!

But I would appreciate if you could comment, "Is CloudBuddy really feature rich?"

Ciao
CB Team