Archil disks provide infinite, shareable storage space for servers running in the AWS or GCP clouds. Get started by creating your first disk, and configuring it to synchronize to the Amazon S3 bucket of your choice.
Archil disks only support mounting from Linux-based servers in a public cloud, such as AWS or GCP.
Archil disks are currently in preview. These instructions are subject to change.

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Creating your first disk

Navigate to the New Disk page in the Archil console, and follow the steps below to create your first disk.
1

Select the disk region

Start by selecting the region where you want Archil to locate your disk. Each Archil disk is automatically replicated to multiple machines within the same region for enhanced durability.
For the highest performance, we recommend locating your disk in the same region as the servers you will use to access it.
2

Add data sources

Each Archil disk synchronizes its data from one or more Data Sources, such as an Amazon S3 bucket. When creating a new disk, you can specify which data source should be used for read and write synchronization.
When adding a new data source, such as an S3 bucket, the bucket must already exist.
3

Configure data source permissions

Some data sources, such as private Amazon S3 buckets, require that you configure permissions to allow Archil to access the data. These instructions will vary depending on the data source you are using.
  • Login to your AWS S3 console
  • Browse to your specified bucket
  • Update the bucket permissions policy to allow Archil access to the bucket. The console will provide the exact policy to add. It will look something like this:
{
    "Version": "2012-10-17", 
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "AllowArchilAccess",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": {
                "AWS": "arn:aws:iam::123456789:role/archil-s3.prod.us-east-1"
            },
            "Action": "s3:*",
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::YOUR-BUCKET-NAME",
                "arn:aws:s3:::YOUR-BUCKET-NAME/*"
            ],
            "Condition": {
                "StringLike": {
                    "aws:userid": "*:YOUR-FILESYSTEM-ID"
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}
4

Configure disk users

Next, you need to configure Archil to allow access to the disk itself from the servers that will connect to it. Archil supports multiple methods of authentication, depending on the cloud provider that hosts your disk.
Archil natively supports using AWS IAM users or roles to authorize access to the disk. Simply add the ARN of the IAM user or role that will be used to connect to the disk.
  • Get your EC2 server’s IAM role arn using the following command:
aws sts get-caller-identity --query 'Arn' --output text |\
sed 's/\:sts\:/\:iam\:/' |\
sed 's/\:assumed-role\//\:role\//' |\
cut -d'/' -f1-2
  • Copy the resulting IAM role arn.
  • Return to the disk’s Details page in the Archil console, and paste the role arn as an Authorized User.
5

Install the Archil client

On the server where you plan to use the Archil disk, install the Archil client using the following command:
curl https://s3.amazonaws.com/archil-client/install | sh
6

Mount the disk

After creating your disk, the Archil console should show a mount command like the following which you can run to mount the disk to a local directory.
sudo archil mount <disk-id> /mnt/data --region <disk-region>
If you’re not using IAM authentication, you can pass your static token credentials with the following command:
sudo archil mount <disk-id> /mnt/data --region <disk-region> --auth-token <token>
7

Start using Archil

Your disk is now ready to use from the directory you specified. Archil provides local-like POSIX access to any data source, including overwrites, renames, and permissions.
When first mounting your disk, Archil automatically sets all files to be owned by the root user. As a result, you either need to change the ownership of the files to your user (such as with chown -R <user> /mnt/data) or use sudo when operating on disk data.
Always use archil unmount to unmount your Archil disks, not the builtin umount command. Unlike umount, the archil unmount command does not exit until all pending data is flushed to the backing disk. This is particularly important on system shutdown, in which the Linux kernel will, by default, call umount on all devices and shutdown without waiting for pending Archil writes to be synced.

Create an Archil disk

Get started by creating a new Archil disk