Mounting Your Own Cloud Storage With Cloud Mounter and AWS

Introduction

My partner and I have a few side projects that rely on storage of large video fails. After one too many hard drives failed over time, I decided that we would opt for moving things to cloud storage.

That being said, there were a few issues with doing this using out-of-the-box solutions:

That being said, we wanted a way to mount storage directly on our machines like we do with external hard drives. This would allow us to use the storage as if it were a local drive.

I was already trialling out SetApp for subscriptions on my Mac, with one such app being Cloud Mounter, an app which fulfills our need of mounting the S3 bucket as a remote drive.

This post will cover how I set up the S3 bucket using AWS CDK and mounted it using Cloud Mounter.

Prerequisites

This guide will walk you through the steps to set up a new application using the AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) in TypeScript, then we will add an S3 bucket that we can mount using Cloud Mounter.

Installation Steps

1. Install AWS CDK

Install the AWS CDK globally using npm:

npm install -g aws-cdk
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2. Set Up AWS Credentials

Ensure your AWS credentials are configured:

3. Create a New CDK Project

Create a new CDK project in TypeScript:

# First, create a folder for your project
mkdir mac-cloud-storage-s3-cdk-app
cd mac-cloud-storage-s3-cdk-app

# Initialise the AWS CDK stack
cdk init app --language typescript

# or using npx
npx aws-cdk@latest init app --language typescript
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Development

1. Explore and Modify Your CDK App

2. Bootstrap Your AWS Environment (if necessary)

Bootstrap your environment to set up an S3 bucket for storing assets:

npx cdk bootstrap
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3. Deploy Your CDK App

We are not ready quite yet, but you could now deploy your AWS CDK app by running:

npx cdk deploy
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Configuring the S3 Bucket and credentials

Update the code in lib/mac-cloud-storage-s3-cdk-app-stack.ts to the following:

import * as cdk from "aws-cdk-lib";
import { Construct } from "constructs";
import * as s3 from "aws-cdk-lib/aws-s3";
import * as iam from "aws-cdk-lib/aws-iam";

export class MacCloudStorageS3CdkAppStack extends cdk.Stack {
  constructor(scope: Construct, id: string, props?: cdk.StackProps) {
    super(scope, id, props);

    const bucket = new s3.Bucket(this, "IntelligentTieringBucket", {
      lifecycleRules: [
        {
          id: "IntelligentTieringRule",
          enabled: true,
          transitions: [
            {
              storageClass: s3.StorageClass.INTELLIGENT_TIERING,
              transitionAfter: cdk.Duration.days(0), // Transition immediately to Intelligent-Tiering
            },
          ],
        },
      ],
    });

    const user = new iam.User(this, "MyBucketUser");

    // Policy allowing access to the specific bucket
    const bucketPolicy = new iam.PolicyStatement({
      actions: ["s3:*"],
      resources: [bucket.bucketArn, `${bucket.bucketArn}/*`],
      effect: iam.Effect.ALLOW,
    });

    // Attach the policy to the user
    user.addToPolicy(bucketPolicy);

    // Output the username
    new cdk.CfnOutput(this, "UserNameOutput", {
      value: user.userName,
      description: "The name of the IAM user",
    });

    // Output the bucket name
    new cdk.CfnOutput(this, "BucketNameOutput", {
      value: bucket.bucketName,
      description: "The name of the S3 bucket",
    });
  }
}
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The construct has comments jotted throughout to denote what is happening, but as a summary:

Generating Credentials For The Created User

In AWS, best practices dictate that you should never display or expose IAM user credentials (like Access Keys) in clear text, especially in your infrastructure code or logs. This is to maintain security and prevent unauthorized access.

However, if you need to create and retrieve IAM user credentials, such as for a newly created user in an automated fashion, you can do this carefully through the AWS Management Console or programmatically using the AWS SDK or CLI. Here's a general approach:

Using AWS Management Console

Using AWS CLI or SDK

Handling Credentials Securely

CDK Consideration

AWS CDK does not have built-in mechanisms to handle the creation and retrieval of IAM user credentials because of the security implications. You should handle such operations outside of your infrastructure as code, ensuring that any sensitive data is securely managed.

Connecting Using CloudMounter

The final part is quite trivial.

Open CloudMounter and you will see a screen like the following:

CloudMounter

Click on the + button and select Amazon S3 from the list of options. This will lead you to a screen where you can input the bucket name, username, access key and secret key.

CloudMounter S3 option

Once you have filled in the details, click Mount and you will be able to access the bucket as if it were a local drive through Finder.

CloudMounter drive on Finder

You now have a connection to the S3 drive that you can use as external storage. Happy days!

Final Considerations

If you do not require the stack that we created today, be sure to tear it down with cdk destroy.

References and Further Reading

Photo credit: boliviainteligente