to Amazon S3 using the Amazon CLI
In this tutorial we are going to help you use the Amazon Command Line Interface (Amazon CLI) to access Amazon S3. We will do this so you can easily build your own scripts for backing up your files to the cloud and easily retrieve them as needed. This will make automating your backup process faster, more reliable, and more programmatic. You can use this information to build a scheduled task (or cron job) to handle your backup operations.
Note: This tutorial builds upon the concepts from the Backing Up Your Files to Amazon S3 tutorial. If you haven't done that tutorial yet, you should complete that tutorial first.
Manage Your Amazon Web Services Resources
Sign in to the ConsoleIn this step, using the IAM service you will create a user account with administrative permission. In later steps you will use this user account to securely access Amazon Web Services services using the Amazon CLI.
a. When you click here, the Amazon Web Services management console will open in a new browser window, so you can keep this step-by-step guide open. When this screen loads, enter your user name and password to get started. Then type IAM in the search bar and select IAM to open the Identity and Access Management dashboard.
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b. From the Amazon Identity and Access Management dashboard, click on Users on the left side.
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c. Click the Add user button.
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d. Enter a user name in the textbox next to User name: (we’ll use Amazon_Admin for this example) and select Programmatic access in the Select Amazon Access Type section. Click the Next: Permissions button.
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e. Click on Attach existing policies directly option. Select AdministratorAccess then click Next: Review.
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f. Click on Create user.
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g. Click the Download Credentials button and save the credentials.csv file in a safe location (you’ll need this later in step 3) and then click the Close button.
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Now that you have your IAM user, you need to install the Amazon Command Line Interface (CLI). Below are instructions based on the kind of operating system you are using; please select the tab that corresponds to your operating system.
Select PC from the tabs below if you are using a Windows-based computer.
Select Mac/Linux from the tabs below if you are using a machine running OSX or Linux.
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PC
b. Open a command prompt by pressing the Windows Key + r to open the run box and enter cmd and press the OK button.
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c. Type aws configure and press enter. When prompted, enter the following:
AWS Access Key ID [None]: enter the Access Key Id from the credentials.csv file you downloaded in step 1 part d
Note: this should look something like AKIAPWINCOKAO3U4FWTN
AWS Secret Access Key [None]: enter the Secret Access Key from the credentials.csv file you downloaded in step 1 part d
Note: this should look something like 5dqQFBaGuPNf5z7NhFrgou4V5JJNaWPy1XFzBfX3
Default region name [None]: enter us-east-1
Default output format [None]: enter json
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Mac / Linux
a. Follow these directions for installing the Amazon CLI bundled installer.
b. OSX users: Open a terminal window by pressing Command + Space and typing terminal in the search window. Then press enter to open the terminal window.
Linux users: Open a terminal window.
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c. Type aws configure and press enter. Enter the following when prompted:
AWS Access Key ID [None]: enter the Access Key Id from the credentials.csv file you downloaded in step 1 part d
Note: this should look something like AKIAPWINCOKAO3U4FWTN
AWS Secret Access Key [None]: enter the Secret Access Key from the credentials.csv file you downloaded in step 1 part d
Note: this should look something like 5dqQFBaGuPNf5z7NhFrgou4V5JJNaWPy1XFzBfX3
Default region name [None]: enter us-east-1
Default output format [None]: enter json
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In this step, you will use the Amazon CLI to create a bucket in Amazon S3 and copy a file to the bucket.
a. Creating a bucket is optional if you already have a bucket created that you want to use. To create a new bucket named my-first-backup-bucket type:
aws s3 mb s3://my-first-backup-bucket
Note: bucket naming has some restrictions; one of those restrictions is that bucket names must be globally unique (e.g. two different Amazon Web Services users can not have the same bucket name); because of this, if you try the command above you will get a BucketAlreadyExists error.
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b. To upload the file my first backup.bak located in the local directory (C:\users) to the S3 bucket my-first-backup-bucket, you would use the following command:
aws s3 cp “C:\users\my first backup.bak” s3://my-first-backup-bucket/
Or, use the original syntax if the filename contains no spaces.
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c. To download my-first-backup.bak from S3 to the local directory we would reverse the order of the commands as follows:
aws s3 cp s3://my-first-backup-bucket/my-first-backup.bak ./
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d. To delete my-first-backup.bak from your my-first-backup-bucket bucket, use the following command:
aws s3 rm s3://my-first-backup-bucket/my-first-backup.bak
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Congratulations! You have set up an IAM user, configured your machine for use with the Amazon command line interface and you have learned how to create, copy, retrieve, and delete files from the cloud. In the next tutorial you’ll learn how to set up a virtual tape drive for use in backing up file from an existing backup program like Veeam, Symantec Backup Exec, Microsoft System Center 2012 Data Protection Manager, or other back up programs.
Learn how to create a Virtual Tape Library and use it with your existing backup software »