Amazon S3 WebDAV access

Question

I would like to access my Amazon S3 buckets without third-party software, but simply through the WebDAV functionality available in most operating systems. Is there a way to do that ? It is important to me that no third-party software is required.

Answer 1

There's a number of ways to do this. I'm not sure about your situation, so here they are:
Option 1: Easiest:
You can use a 3rd party "cloud gateway" provider, like http://storagemadeeasy.com/CloudDav/

Option 2: Set up your own "cloud gateway" server

• Set up a dedicated server or virtual server to act as a gateway. Using Amazon's own EC2 would be a good choice.

• Set up software that mounts S3 as a drive. Two I know of on Windows: (1) CloudBerry Drive http://www.cloudberrylab.com/ and (2) WebDrive (http://webdrive.com). For Linux, I have never done it, but you can try: https://github.com/s3fs-fuse/s3fs-fuse

• Set up a webdav server like CrushFTP. (It comes to mind because it's stable and cheap and works on any OS.) Another option is IIS but I personally find it's harder to set up securely for webdav.

• Set up a user in your WebDav server (ie CrushFTP or IIS) with access to the mapped S3 drive.

• Possible snag: Assuming you're using Windows, to start your services automatically and have this work, you may need to set up both services to use the same Windows user account (Services->(Your Service)->[right-click]Properties->Log On tab). This is because the S3 mapping software might not map the S3 drive for all Windows users. Alternatively, you can use FireDaemon if you get stuck on this step to start the programs as a service all under the same username.

Other notes: I have experience using WebDrive under pretty heavy loads, and it seems to work well. Under tons of pounding (I'm talking thousands of files per hour being added to a 5 TB WebDrive) it started to crash Windows. But I'm not sure if you are going that far with it. Also, if you're using EC2, you may not have that issue since it was likely caused by a huge transfer queue in memory and EC2 will have faster transit to S3 and keep the queue smaller.