views:

801

answers:

7

We are looking for a secure online solution to access our files stored on Amazon S3. We have about 3K files, mostly media and documents, that we need to make available to our employees on the move. We don't want to develop anything in-house if there is an existing solution.

Please note that our employees are not technologically minded , so a simple web based upload/download GUI would work the best.

+1  A: 

Does it really need to be hosted, or just easily accessible by your employees? There's a firefox extension called S3 Fox that embeds an excellent S3 file manager into firefox, and works on all platforms for which firefox is available.

Edit:

There is S3browse.com, although I've never tried it. I would of course be very wary of any web-based interface to S3 that I didn't control as you will have to give them your access identifiers and once someone else has them your account is ripe for abuse.

Nick Bastin
Thanks for your response. That wouldn't work unfortunately. We need a solution that would work online with any computer/browser out of the box, without any additional instalations or configuration requred from our employees and customers. Otherwise we could use any available windows client.
Dick Lebavo
Thanks for your word of caution. Aparently S3fm is not a "hosted" solution, so hopefully it won't have this issue.
Dick Lebavo
Nick, check out S3fm (http://www.s3fm.com/). Although it's an online solution, you don't actually share you credentials with a 3rd party web site. The app is 100% Ajax, so it loads from Amazon S3, runs in you browser and communicates back directly using the S3 protocol. This way you credentials are secure and never leave your computer.
Alex
A: 

Note that you can very easily set up browser access (either public or secured with AWS credentials) to an S3 bucket so that the files are accessible via HTTP, without the need for a plugin.

There are a few nice standalone clients that give you an explorer-type view of an S# bucket, rather like WinSCP etc. do for FTP or SSH accessible directories. Try Cloudberry for Windows or CyberDuck for Mac.

If you want a more functional tool, maybe something cross platform and easy for your employees or IT folks to set up, take a look at JungleDisk; it lets you mount S3 directories as virtual drives on Windows, Mac or Linux, and also takes care of scheduled backups from your client machines to S3 if that would be useful.

[1]: http://Cloudberry Explorer

gareth_bowles
Thanks for your response. We want our users to be able to browse/select available files and directories online.
Dick Lebavo
+3  A: 

You can use S3fm, a free web-based file manager for Amazon S3.

http://www.s3fm.com/

Strictly speaking, it's not a "hosted" solution so you don't have to share your credentials with a 3rd party web site. It's a stand-alone Ajax app that loads directly from Amazon S3 and runs in your browser. Works with all major browser/OS combinations.

Next version will allow user management and file sharing with non-AWS users.

Alex
Thanks for sharing. That's exactly what we were looking for. Hadn't come across it before.
Dick Lebavo
+1  A: 

Sorry guys, can't edit my own question anymore. Just wanted to thank Richard M and Alex for sharing the S3fm link. That's exactly what we were looking for. Works flawlessly! Our folks will love the interface.

Looking forward to the next version with file sharing.

Dick Lebavo
A: 

I want to thank Gareth for bringing up CloudBerry Explorer Freeware and I want to provide a correct link

A: 

If you want a more functional cross-platform tool to handle your Amazon S3, you can have a look at CrossFTP Pro. It is a FTP style tool to process FTP, SFTP, WebDav, Sun Cloud, and Amazon S3 protocols. It provides both the standalone version on desktop and applet version in the web browser.

+1  A: 

Try https://s3explorer.appspot.com/. It's secure, easy to use and cross-browser.

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