I have used the Jungle Disk Online Backup Service in conjunction with Amazon S3 on my EX470 since January this year.

I also signed up a friend for the same service about the same time when I installed his WHS exclusively for its automatic backup facility.

This has sat there happily backing up various desktop PC's and laptops with no user intervention whatsoever.

A mission critical database file was backed up between 5-6am every morning using the JD/S3 service.

Yesterday the unthinkable happened - a fire destroyed his premises taking with it all of the computers.

He lost everything.

Good job we backed up the database offline...or did we?

A quick look at my own Jungle Disk Add-In tab shows my own bunch of test files (I never did get round to properly sorting out my own files to backup) don't appear to have been backed up since 4th October?? No issue for me of course as nothing here is mission critical.

Using MS RDP I logged onto my own WHS and checked Administrative Tools/Services where Jungle Disk Online Backup was showing as Started so I can only assume it is running.

Worrying though that it hasn't backed up since 4th October but I can live with that.

My friend though is completely reliant upon the database and although I can configure a new PC or laptop in a couple of hours we do need the current backup database.

Fire apart here is where the real grief starts - all I want to do is obtain a copy of a single file backed up using JD/S3.

All of the details about JD/S3 were in emails on his PC - all gone.
The login details for JD/WHS were in the WHS Add-In - all gone.

However with a bit of a struggle and lots of imagination I managed to login to his Amazon S3 account but it tells me absolutely nothing - there is a Usage Report which I need to login to access ( I thought I was already logged in to be looking at the account details?) but when I look at my own for example it shows all is well up to and including this morning 17th October whereas the JD tab tells me the last backup was 4th October...useless.

Of course I can't access his Add-In tab as his WHS was destroyed in the fire...

I see the option to use the AWS Management Console and this requires logging in yet again but when I try this it tells me I am not signed up to EC2, Elastic MapReduse or CloudFront whatever they are...

Next step is to email support so you click on the Support Center.

I read the FAQ's but nothing in there applies to my situation - remember all I want to do is download the single database file that I should have been backed up religiously.

There is an option to go to a User Forum so I look there and see all sorts of stuff that mean nothing to me such as;
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
Amazon Simple DB (Beta)
Amazon CloudFront (Beta)
Amazon Simple Queue Service
Amazon Elastic MapReduce
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Beta)
Amazon Mechanical Turk (WTF is this?)

Anyway I spy Amazon Simple Storage Service (which I believe is the one I want) so I search there but find nothing.

And here is where it gets really frustrating as there is no option to email support directly!

There is an option to sign up for Silver & Gold Support ($100-$400 per month) which looks like the only way for a registered user who has been billed a monthly payment every month all year to contact support directly.

I had no idea it was all so complicated - I chose the WHS for its simplicity and Jungle Disk/Amazon S3 for its integration into the WHS Console and its ease of use.

So I am still unable to recover my friends database and apparently have no way of contacting Amazon S3 who have regularly been taking our money for a backup service that on the one occasion disaster strikes turns out to be as useless as a chocolate teapot.

Unless I have missed something in my haste & panic to recover my friends critical database from a service I recommended and installed for him.

Anyone here suffered a similar fate or managed to access their online Backup without the original server where the service was setup?

Thanks & regards,
-=Glyn=-

Sorry to hear about the fire loss. Not 100% sure about this but I think this might work. You need to use an MSS to retrieve them. Go out and buy a harddrive you can put in your MSS. Pull all your harddrives including the system drive. Put that new drive in that system drive location. Perform a factory reset to put the WHS OS on that drive. Probably not necessary, but set up all the shares as they were on your friend's MSS. Install the jungle disk add-on for S3 and set it up with your friend's account number and password, etc. Then go to the Jungle Disk tab and you'll see an option for Restore Files. Click that and follow the procedure to restore the files. It will give you a directory and file tree for the shares that were backed up and you should be able to locate the individual file you need. Now, I suspect you could also just use your MSS with all drives left in place and just change the account numbers and passwords for Jungle Disk S3 but not sure how it will react and what it will do to your other data. Another thought is whether you might be able to set up Jungle Disk on a desktop and use that to access the backups with the account number or password but not sure if it'll be confused it doesn't see the shares to restore the file to on the desktop as they would appear on the MSS. Hope that helps. It's my best guess.


This has caused me to now set up some test files to upload to S3 via Jungle Disk from the MSS and then try to restore them.

_________________
HP MSS EX490 with Intel E6300
4 GB RAM
7 TB Drive Storage

MediaSmartServer.net Wiki, it's loaded with helpful information about WHS and the HP MediaSmart Server.

Thanks for the detailed reply T-H,

I have already asked Jungle Disk if I can just substitute my own Access key & Secter Key with his just to be able to restore/download the required file using my WHS.

I believe if I installed the Desktop Edition on my own PC I would have to purchase it to use it but of course that would be worth it just to have the data back - but only if that data is current and up to date of course...which if my own experience is anything to go on is looking iincreasingly unlikely.

I downloaded a utility called CloudBerry Explorer and installed it on my PC and using his access details I can see the file but worryingly the Date Modified is showing as 30/08/2009 03:00:11 and if so that means his automatic backup stopped working earlier than mine without warning.

Doesn't look good does it...

Regarding your test files and restoring them I do this here every so often and it works faultlessy.

Obviously when I set up both systems I tried a restore operation and it went like a dream. I have since repeated this test procedure on an ad-hoc basis on both machines but not for a couple of months now as my peace of mind was satisfied that it works as advertised.

It is very fast & easy to use via the JD Add-In - a truly One-Click Restore process...well you have to select the files you want to restore of course...

But this quick, easy & reliable test restore operation counts for nothing if Jungle Disk for whatever reason decides to quit working on its own without warning as it has done on my own WHS and looks like it might have done on my friends machine also.

I took up the option of Jungle Disk on my own WHS and recommended it to my friend as a Disaster Recovery fallback and peace of mind but now that disaster has struck it seems increasingly unlikely that JD was actually backing up the only file that it was ever asked to on a regular basis.

Thanks & regards,
-=Glyn=-

Amazon S3 should be able to give you the Access Key and Secret Key with his account number and info in hand. It sounds like you've got his account number but if not the S3 account number might appear on the credit card he used to pay the monthly charges.

With regard to the date on the file, any chance the file or folder was renamed at some point and that is just an old copy (S3 does not delete old files unless you chose that option in Jungle Disk).

Good luck.

OT - Just did a test and it restored files easily.

_________________
HP MSS EX490 with Intel E6300
4 GB RAM
7 TB Drive Storage

MediaSmartServer.net Wiki, it's loaded with helpful information about WHS and the HP MediaSmart Server.

Hello again T-H,

I have both his Access Key and his Secret (typo in last post) Key so no problems there...

No chance the folder was altered in any way - I set the account up last January and when I visited his place done some test restores with no problems...he wouldn't know where to look anyway...

His options are the same as mine - it is set not to delete files and as that is the only file we were backing up it would seem that unless S3 does something wacky with the dates then it is an old version and it has not backed up since 30/8

Although the WHS Add-In interface is a dream to use and as you have found out easy to restore what sort of mission critical program first of all fails to back up (I have now seen this anomaly on two WHS systems now) and then fails to advise you that it has failed if you see what I mean?

Still waiting on a response from both Jungle Disk and AWS but I have a horrible feeling about all this...

Can I ask anyone else who uses Jungle Disk with an automatic timed operation to have a look at the Console tab and see when the date of the last succesful backup took place please?

BTW did you know that Jungle Disk apparently use their own proprietry format for storing files on Amazon S3 which may render some or all of your valuable data incompatible with other S3 Interfaces out there?

I noticed some of the iPhone S3 apps mentioned they do not work with Jungle Disk...the more I think about JD the more I am beginning to despise it...I believe they even withdrew the long gestation WHS Beta in August...

This promised WHS Add-In looks interesting...any takers?

http://www.cloudberrylab.com/default.as ... backup-whs

Regards,
-=Glyn=-

I've not used Jungle Disk so can't comment on it failing to back up. I do use S3 however, and in and of itself I don't have any concerns about it. If JD wasn't backing up your friends server then that is just horrible, adding injury to an already terrible loss.

I use S3Fox within Firefox for managing my S3 files and folders.

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins?

For those that may be interested or more importantly for those poor, unfortunate souls who may be using Jungle Disk and/or Amazon S3 I thought I would follow up on my quest for support.

They have charged for the peace of mind & privilige of having a single file backed up using Jungle Disk since January 2009 and on the first and only occasion that I need resort to a true Disaster Recovery option to recover this file have replied to my request as follows;

----------snip----------
Hello,

Your question will be best answered on our Amazon S3 developer forums:

http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/s3/forums

Our technical staff and the Amazon Web Services developer community participate in the forums regularly and will be able to help you.

If you have critical business infrastructure on AWS you may also want to consider an AWS Premium Support package ( http://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport ), which provides a direct, reliable support channel for technical issues related to Amazon S3, EC2, SimpleDB, SQS, and CloudFront.

I hope this helps. We look forward to seeing you again soon.

Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question:

If yes, click here:
http://www.amazon.com/rsvp-y?c=chxadcxg3466797447

If not, click here:
http://www.amazon.com/rsvp-n?c=chxadcxg ... trk&nc2c=1

Please note: this e-mail was sent from an address that cannot accept incoming e-mail.

Best regards,

Crystal
http://aws.amazon.com
=============================

Talk about pass-the-buck mentality and the totallack of concern or support borders on criminal IMHO.

To say I am angry & frustrated is obviously an understatement.

-=Glyn=-

That doesn't sound like good customer service. Your saga has got me thinking again in the direction of something like Carbonite rather than sticking with S3. Going to see if there is an add in or some other method to make it work on WHS.

_________________
HP MSS EX490 with Intel E6300
4 GB RAM
7 TB Drive Storage

MediaSmartServer.net Wiki, it's loaded with helpful information about WHS and the HP MediaSmart Server.

And to cap it all I've finally had a response from Bungle Disk also - in reverse order;

----------snip----------
JungleJosh, Oct 20 09:58 am (EDT):
Glyn,

Windows Home Server is/was a beta product and is not considered production use or stable. The best way for him to verify it's working properly is to periodically keep an eye on it, or switch to the Desktop offering.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Glyn Hughes, Oct 19 11:43 pm (EDT):
Josh,

I have rebooted and it is now working but you have totally missed my point
which was the fact that the Add-In stopped working in the first place
without so much as a sound.

This is not the behaviour that such an important Add-In should behave is it?

As I said it looks like my friends system may have exhibited the same
behaviour and as he now needs to carry out a disaster recovery it looks like
he will not have a current backup either.

Regards,
-=Glyn=-

_____

From: JungleJosh [mailto:notifications-support@jungledisk.zendesk.com]
Sent: 19 October 2009 15:17
To: Glyn Hughes
Subject: [Jungle Disk Support] Re: The Jungle Disk Service has not been
configured or is not run...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

JungleJosh, Oct 19 10:17 am (EDT):
Hi Glyn,

While Windows is a popular operating system, it is certainly far from perfect. Rebooting is the first step to try. Then see if it can successfully complete a backup. If not, what error messages are presented?

----------snip----------

The last time his database was backed up automatically by Bungle Disk was 30/8/09 so 6 weeks of work has vanished without trace...not the fault of Amazon S3 obviously - they can only store what is sent to them!

I would urge anyone that uses the crappy Bungle Disk Add-In to check to see when it last backed up automatically.

I would be interested to know if this has only affected both of the systems I have access to or if it is more widespread than that.

Despite Amazon S3 and their poor support I would still be happy using them for online storage if I had an Add-In I could trust...I have learned a lot more about online backup in the days since the fire!

Kind regards,
-=Glyn=-

Ouch, that is very frustrating and disappointing. Perhaps this is why they discontinued the WHS product?

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins?

I have been using the HP Online Backup Add-In (with Amazon S3) and have NOT seen this kind of behavior. It has missed a couple days due to connectivity issues -- but it appropriately posted the status. Granted, I need to open the console AND the tab to see the status but I can live with that. There is a LOT of room for (easy) improvement on the information available in that tab but I have seen nothing to indicate it has not worked flawlessly for a several months now (ever since the Add-In was available).

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

Hi John,

I am glad the HP Online Backup is working for you - one of the reasons I chose the JD option was because HP were using a similar thing utilising S3.

Bungle Disk had previously reported errors in the Console Tab when they occurred (rarely) but not the fact that it thought the service was not running when in fact it was or more importantly that it had not run the automatic backup schedule that had been working well all year.

Seeing the word 'Succesful' in the Console tab gave no indication that it sat there thinking the service had not been configured or was not running lulled me into a false sense of security.

I have since tried the Cloudberry WHS Beta and I can tell you it is in a different league altogether!

I will tell you how dumb Bungle Disk is - it was unable to delete any of the files it backed up leaving @ 4,500 files on Amazon that I was being charged for.

I had to use another Cloudberry product Explorer this time to delete all of these files...actually at the same time that the WHS Add-In was backing up another bunch of files in the same bucket.

Alex, maybe it would be possible for Remote Notification to report if any of the S3 Online Backup programs fail to make the scheduled backup?

Long shot I know...

Anyway the whole experience has been a nightmare and my peace of mind shattered...but I feel much happier now that Cloudberry is on the case!

Thanks & regards,
-=Glyn=-

Yeah, would be tough to figure out how each different app worked and how to detect failures. Plus I have kept Remote Notification pure and only forward the WHS health notifications. Other Add-Ins should use the health notifications in which case I'll forward them. I feel your pain, though!

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins?

Just a clarification here... HP's Online Backup Service is not Jungle Disk correct? The issue here is only with the Jungle Disk add-in (which we now know has been discontinued)?

HP's Online Backup Service is a different front-end to Amazon S3. It's a rather basic interface, but it works...

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch