S3 sync, please

S3 is a more reliable, fast, modern standard than WebDAV. Amazon S3 remains the most bang-for-your-buck cloud storage for most people, and homelab types like myself self-host our own S3-compatible services (e.g. via Minio). Why not support sync to S3 buckets? S3 APIs are so well developed and documented this should be an easy addition, and would make my life a lot easier. Right now my best option for DevonThink sync between two Macs (one running DT server at the office, another that travels with me), an iPad, and an iPhone is to run a NextCloud instance just for WebDAV, and it’s giving me nothing but problems. S3 would be so much easier.

You’re running NextCloud that requires a Webserver to run WebDAV while the Webserver itself could offer WebDAV? Sounds a bit too complicated.

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Welcome @sangye

There are very few things in software implementation at this level that are ”easy addition[s]”.

We could also add specific support for other services, but: (1) it’s not simply done, (2) you are referring to much nerdier setups that most of our clientele won’t be able to implement, (3) it needs far more than one person requesting it, and (4) adds to the development and support workload and ongoing maintenance. For example, when something goes wrong with a sync, will you first contact Amazon or us?

The suggestion is noted however.

If you’re the homelab type, you could set up a WebDAV proxy to S3:

Alternatively, you could try SFTPGo which can allegedly provide WebDAV access to S3:

Me, I just installed the WebDAV package on my Synology box; problem solved. It’s similar for HomelabOS, VivumLab, Cloudron, FreeNAS, TrueNAS, Nextcloud, etc. If you’re doing it yourself, any Linux will have a package available, or you could use a Docker container.

I use AWS and S3 every day at work, and I can’t imagine trying to support it for regular people. “Which of the eight kinds of S3 should I use? What’s the difference between a region and a partition? How do I set up IAM? What’s a policy subresource? What’s the difference between an S3 Managed Key and an AWS Key Management key? How do I set up CloudWatch to tell me how much the storage is costing me? How do I set up a tiering configuration to use glacier?”

The one argument I can see for S3 is that cloud-hosted S3 is likely cheaper than hosted WebDAV. For most people, though, 50GB of iCloud for $1 a month from Apple, or any cheap web hosting that uses cpanel, is probably not so expensive as to make S3 worth the pain. I know I decided against it…

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