Configuring Community Server for Amazon S3

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) is a third-party service that allows you to store files and distribute them through Amazon’s file distribution network. You can configure Community Server to use Amazon S3 to store some or all files related to content such as post attachments and avatars. 

Support for Amazon S3 is included with Community Server, but you must configure Community Server to use Amazon S3. You can independently configure each Centralized File System file store in Community Server to use Amazon S3. 

Note: Community Server does not have a migration tool to migrate files from the file system storage to Amazon S3.

Procedure

To configure Community Server for Amazon S3, use the following procedure for each file store identified by a <fileStore /> node in the <CentralizedFileStorage> region of the communityserver.config file.

1. Remove the basePath attribute and value.
2. Update the type attribute to “CommunityServer.Components.AmazonS3FileStorageProvider, CommunityServer.Components”.
3. Add the awsSecretAccessKey attribute with the value of the secret or private access key provided by Amazon.
4. Add the awsSecretAccessKey attribute with the value set to the public access key provided by Amazon.
5. Set the bucket attribute to the name of the Amazon S3 bucket into which files should be stored. All Centralized File Storage (CFS) file stores can be saved within a single bucket. If the bucket does not yet exist, Community Server will create the bucket when it first accesses Amazon S3.
6. The following settings are optional:

• Set the secure attribute to true/false to specify whether communications with Amazon S3 should be conducted over SSL.
• Set the domain attribute to the vanity domain alias to be used when Community Server interacts with Amazon S3. This domain should resolve to s3.amazonaws.com.          

After you configure Community Server to use Amazon S3, the CommunityServer.Components.PostAttachments file store definition in communityserver.config may look like this:

<fileStore name="CommunityServer.Components.PostAttachments" type="CommunityServer.Components.FileSystemFileStorageProvider, CommunityServer.Components" awsSecretAccessKey="XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX" awsAccessKeyId="XXXXXXXXXXXX" bucket="community" secure="false" downloadValidatorType="CommunityServer.Components.PostAttachmentFileAccessValidator, CommunityServer.Components" />