Setting up Automated Backups

Introduction

 

SecureDocMan’s Automated Backup feature provides a way of synchronizing the document revisions in your SecureDocMan account into an Amazon AWS S3 storage account of your own. The result of this synchronization is a highly-reliable off-site location where your documents will always be available even if you leave the services of SecureDocMan. This backup can also be used to perform your own batch-downloads of your files when the need arises to download the files to your local computer or to another backup service.

 

Settings

 

A user with Company Super-Admin permissions will be able to configure the system to enable automated backups. There is a field in the Company Settings page where you can enter the name of an Amazon S3 “bucket” to use. This bucket will be one that you have created in your own AWS S3 account. You will enter that bucket name in the form of “s3://mybucketnamehere”. When you enter this bucket name and save the settings our system will attempt to create a test file called “securedoctest” in your bucket. If successful you will begin to see folders and files created in your bucket.

 

Steps:

• Create an Amazon AWS account if you do not already have one:
  • http://aws.amazon.com/s3/ and click Sign Up
• Once signed up and you are logged into the AWS web console you can click Services->S3 to go to the S3 storage management tool.
• Create a bucket that you will use for your SecureDocMan backups:
  • Click the “Create Bucket” button in the AWS S3 page.
  • Choose your bucket region. The region must match the region
     your SecureDocMan instance is configured to use (typically
     US East (N. Virginia) / us-east-1). Check with support if
     you're unsure.
  •  
  • Finish with the bucket settings and save.
• Select the new bucket you just created
• After creating the bucket, go to the "Permissions" tab and
   find "Object Ownership". Select "Bucket owner preferred"
   and enable ACLs. New S3 buckets default to "Bucket owner
   enforced" which disables ACLs — our backup system requires
   ACLs to be enabled to set bucket-owner-full-control on each
   backup file.
• Click the “Permissions->Bucket Policy->Edit” button
• Paste the following text into the editor:

{
   "Version": "2012-10-17",
   "Statement": [
       {
           "Sid": "AllowSecureDocManUpload",
           "Effect": "Allow",
           "Principal": {
               "AWS": "arn:aws:iam::267724245958:root"
           },
           "Action": [
               "s3:PutObject",
               "s3:PutObjectAcl"
           ],
           "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::yourbucketname/*"
       }
   ]
}

• Replace yourbucketname with the bucket name you created for the backups
• Click Save Changes

 

You should see a green checkbox next to the save button then the window will go away. If you edit the bucket policy again you should see the text you just saved.

 

Now you are ready to configure your SecureDocMan account:

Steps:

• Login as a Company Super-Admin user
• Click on “Settings->Companies->edit"
• Find the automated backups section and enter your bucket name:
  • example: s3://yourbucketname
• If the bucket policy was done correctly you should see a response stating that your company settings were saved. You are now automatically backing up documents to your new bucket. If you go back to the bucket list now and refresh the page you should see our test file.
• If you receive an error you may have entered your bucket name wrong or generated a policy incorrectly.
• If you experience any issues during this process you may contact us at [e-mail] and we will be happy to assist.

 

Accessing Your Backups

 

Your files will show up in the S3 Bucket with a folder
structure like this:

/mybucket/doc/000/000/001/000/111/123/12312/original/report.pdf

Which relates to:

/mybucket       = your bucket name
/doc            = the folder we place your documents in
/000/000/001    = your company ID of 1
/000/111/123    = the document ID of 111123
/12312          = the revision (document file) ID
/original/      = the revision folder
/report.pdf     = the original filename

 

The backup files will remain in your bucket as long as that bucket exists. If you would like to access your files directly or download all of your files locally you can choose from a list of S3 tools including:

 

• CyberDuck (free FTP client)
• AWS Console (web based)
• AWS Command Line Interfact (aws-cli)
• S3 Command Line Tool (s3cmd)

 

Note: You will need some form of access settings in order to use one of these tools. Please see this page that describes various security credentials:

 

AWS Security Credentials Documentation

You can always access your individual files by logging into the AWS Console at https://aws.amazon.com. We will use the CyberDuck FTP Client to show you how you could download your entire bucket to your local computer.

 

CyberDuck Walkthrough

1. Download and install the free CyberDuck FTP client: https://cyberduck.io
2. Run CyberDuck and click the Open Connection button
3. Choose S3 Amazon Simple Storage Service
4. Enter your S3 access key id
5. Enter your S3 secret access key (see AWS Security Credentials Documentation)
6. Click Connect
7. Locate your bucket, right-click and select "Download As.."
8. Choose a location and click “Download"
9. The files will begin to copy to your local computer into the location specified.

 

For additional information on the Amazon S3 Storage system you can visit the Amazon help center here:

https://aws.amazon.com/documentation/s3/