Sign up for an Amazon AWS Account

Sign up for the account here. Select the basic support plan.

 

Generate Access Key and Secret Key

After signing up for an Amazon AWS account, you’ll need to generate the Access Key and Secret Key to use S3-DR.

1. In the upper right of your Amazon AWS console, select your name > Security Credentials to generate your Access/Secret key.
2. Select Continue to Security Credentials.
3. Expand Access Keys and select Create New Access Key.
4. Select Show Access Key. Record your Access Key and Secret Key. You will not have the option to get these again (without regenerating the keys).

 

Download S3-DR

Now that you have an AWS Account and the Access Key and Secret Key, move onto downloading S3-DR.

Visit the Downloads page of this site to download the latest version of S3-DR. We recommend that you extract the zip file and copy the S3-DR folder to your C drive so that it’s located at C:/S3-DR.
 

Configure Backup: Basic Method

Follow the instructions below to select what should be backed up, using S3-DR. This is the basic method, using the GUI. The GUI will create scripts to run the CLI, but you can modify them using the Advanced Method ( section below).

1. Open the S3-DR folder and run the runGui.bat file.
2. If your computer is not setup for encryption, follow the prompts to install the appropriate support.
3. Enter backup information:
   S3-DR-JAR field: Do not edit this field.
   DIR_ROOT field: Enter the directory to backup (Example: C:\Users\Documents).
   DIR_EXCLUDE field: Enter directories to exclude.
   BUCKET_NAME field: Enter a unique name for AWS S3 (Example: s3-dr-yourname-documents)
   ACCESS_KEY field: Enter the AWS S3 Access Key (found during ‘Generate Access Key and Secret Key’ section above)
   SECRET_KEY field: Enter the AWS S3 Secret Key (found during ‘Generate Access Key and Secret Key’ section above)
   ENCRYPTION_KEY field: Do not edit this field. Record this key as it will be needed to restore data in the future.
4. Select Verify S3 Connectivity.
5. Ensure the following message appears: ‘Verify was successful. Bucket name is available to use.’ If the bucket name is not available, enter a new name in the BUCKET_NAME field. After successfully verifying, select Create Backup Scheduled Task.
6. In Task Scheduler, select Task Scheduler Library.
7. Open the backup task (Bucket_Name entered above).
8. Right click and select Properties.
9. Select ‘Run whether user is logged on or not’.
10. Select OK.

 

Running S3 DR

Never run multiple instances of S3 DR for the same bucket at the same time. The easiest way to avoid this, if using the Basic Method (above), is to always run S3 DR from the Task Scheduler and never run it by executing the .bat file.
 

Configure Backup: Advanced Method

To configure the backup through CLI, view the Documentation page.