Simple Amazon Glacier Uploader is a free desktop client for Amazon Glacier that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. This free file uploader for Amazon Glacier is built with Java, so it is OS independent. You can download it as a exe or a jar file, and run it on operating system of your choice. This desktop client for Amazon Glacier lets you connect to Amazon Glacier vaults, create new vaults, upload files on Amazon Glacier, and download archives.
We covered the launch of Amazon Glacier earlier. Peculiar thing about Amazon Glacier is that Amazon hasn’t provided any interface to upload or download files from Glacier. It has just provided API that can be used by program developers to create their own programs. Soon enough, one of the first desktop client for Amazon Glacier was launched as FastGlacier. And now there are many clients for Amazon Glacier out there.
Simple Amazon Glacier Uploader completely justifies its name in being very simple. It has just one window that does everything, without other tricky configuration options.
Download and Installation of Simple Amazon Glacier Uploader:
As I mentioned above, Simple Amazon Glacier Uploader can be downloaded as exe file or jar file. The download size is less than 10 MB. It requires Java version 1.6 or above on your computer to run (you’ll most probably already have it).
Once you have downloaded the file, there is no installation at all. Just double click on the file to run it. I tried it on Windows 7, but the process will probably be same on Mac OS X as well as Linux.
When I tried downloading and running it, I got all sort of warnings from my antivirus, but I ignored all those and it worked fine.
How to Use this Desktop Client for Amazon Glacier:
Simple Amazon Glacier Uploader is extremely simple to use. When you run this program, you see the window as I have shown above. In that, you need to provide your AWS credentials. This is the part where I hated this program: it shows both access key as well as secret key as plain text. So, if anybody sees your computer, they will be able to access both. I hope developer changes this to show the key as asterisks.
Once you have added the credentials, you will probably look for a login button, but there is none. Ideally, it will automatically connect to your Amazon Glacier account, and pull information about your existing vaults. My vaults are in US East, and that was the selection, but it wasn’t showing my vaults. Then I realized that the coding must have been done to capture login information on change of “Server Location” drop-down. So, I changed server location to something else and then back to US East, and it started showing my vaults in “Vault Selection” section. Quite happy to see that it showed my existing vaults correctly.
It also shows an option to “Create Vault”. Do ensure that you have already selected correct server location before you create vault. Once you have selected the vault or created a new vault, next step is to upload files. My file upload test with FastGlacier hadn’t gone as smooth as I expected, so I was a bit apprehensive about this program too. It quickly removed all my doubts.
To upload files to Amazon Glacier, you can click on “Select File” option to select a file from your computer. Or, you can just drag and drop files there. After that, click on “Upload” button. Simple Amazon Glacier Uploader will quickly start uploading the files.
I tried uploading two small files in one go, and the upload process finished quickly.
Apart from that, this Amazon Glacier software also gives you option to download archive, batch upload multiple files to different servers, create log of all the actions done, and much more.
Verdict:
Simple Amazon Glacier Uploader is definitely one of the simplest Amazon Glacier desktop clients out there. I really liked its ease of use, its small size, no install feature, and the fact that it works on Mac and Linux as well. However, what I didn’t like was the fact that it shows keys in plain text, and missing “Login” button.
So, if you want a bare bones client for Amazon Glacier, then this would be your favored pick.
