Working with Amazon S3 compatible Storage Accounts

Amazon S3 compatible Storages overview

The Amazon S3 API is now a de facto standard interface for cloud storage, and many storage providers offer access via an Amazon S3 compatible API. Some examples are: BackBlaze, Wasabi, Dreamhost, Dunkel Storage as well as many others.

With CS Browser you can easily connect to Amazon S3 compatible storage services with minimal configuration.

To connect to Amazon S3 compatible storage, you need the following details:

• Access Key ID - also known as a username.
• Secret Access Key - also known as a password.
• REST Endpoint (an API endpoint) - the address used to send requests to the storage. It is usually provided with the username and password, can be found in the storage documentation, or can be obtained from support.

How to Connect to Amazon S3 compatible Storage:

1. Start CS Browser and choose Accounts > Add new account.

   

   The Add New Account dialog will open:

   

2. Choose Amazon S3 Compatible Storage as the account type.

3. Specify the REST Endpoint - an address that is used to send API calls to the storage. Please check the storage documentation or contact the storage support to find the REST endpoint address.

4. Specify Access Key ID and Secret Access Key - access keys can be found in your storage profile. Please check the storage documentation or contact storage support if you have difficulties obtaining your access keys.

5. Enable Encrypt Access Keys with a password to use your own master password instead of the built-in application key. CS Browser will prompt for it whenever it needs to unlock this account.

6. Turn on Use secure transfer (SSL/TLS) if you would like to encrypt all communications with the storage.

7. Click Add new account.

   You can now choose the newly added account from the Accounts menu:

   

Advanced Amazon S3 compatible Storage Settings

You may also need to configure additional settings to connect to Amazon S3 compatible storage, for example the Signature Version or the Addressing Model.

By default, the Path-style addressing model and Signature Version 4 are used.

To modify these settings, click the advanced settings link located at the bottom-left corner of the dialog.

The Advanced Amazon S3 compatible Storage Settings dialog will open:

You can configure the following settings here:

Amazon S3 compatible

Signature Version - We recommend using Signature V4 when supported by the storage.

Addressing Model - the most supported addressing model is Path-style and it is selected by default, but you may need to change it to the Virtual-host style.

Override storage regions - you can define your custom storage regions here. The format is Region Name=region-code. Multiple regions can be defined, each region on a new line. If you define multiple regions, the storage must support Amazon S3 compatible GetBucketLocation API call.

Region-specific endpoint - an optional field you can use to specify a region-specific endpoint template for your Amazon S3 compatible storage. The {region-code} variable can be used as the placeholder for the region code.

If Version 4 is selected for the Signature and the s3:GetBucketLocation API call is supported by the storage, the {region-code} variable will be replaced with the region code returned by this call, resulting in the construction of a region-specific endpoint and allowing you to avoid region-specific redirects and extra requests.

You can find more details and usage examples for these settings on the following page: How to connect to Wasabi

Miscellaneous

List All My Buckets When Account Assigned - When checked, CS Browser will perform the s3:ListAllMyBuckets call when the account is assigned. If the account does not have permission to list all buckets, you can uncheck this option to avoid failed tasks and warnings in the log.

List All My Buckets in All Regions - When checked, CS Browser will perform the s3:ListAllMyBuckets call for each region. This is useful for storage providers that support multiple regions but do not offer a unified endpoint for listing all buckets across regions. To use this feature correctly, you need to specify the regions in the Override Storage Regions field and configure a Region-Specific Endpoint.

Use the Multi-Object Delete API - if checked, CS Browser can delete up to 1,000 files in a single API request. This is possible when the storage supports the Multi-Object Delete API. Most Amazon S3 compatible storage services support this feature, so you may keep this option turned on in most cases.

Use Multi-Part Copy - if checked, CS Browser can copy large files using the Multi-Part Copy API. This is possible when the storage supports the Multi-Part Copy API. Most Amazon S3 compatible storage services support this feature, so you may keep this option turned on in most cases.

Use Custom Checksum Algorithms - enable this option if the storage supports custom checksums via the x-amz-checksum-<algo> header. Supported algorithms include CRC32, CRC32C, CRC-64/NVME, SHA-1, and SHA-256.

External Buckets - You can edit the external buckets associated with the account. Each bucket should be listed on a new line. Optional paths are also supported, with a slash used as the delimiter (e.g., my-bucket/and/optional/path).

Custom IAM Endpoints

You can also specify custom IAM endpoint if this service is supported by your cloud provider. Please use the REST Endpoint field to specify the IAM endpoint.

The ;; symbols must be used as separator.

objects.server.com;;iam.server.com