Rackspace Cloud Block Storage is a Service from Rackspace to address the demand for a reliable storage Rackspace Cloud clients. Here is a Basic Users Guide. We published an article with very short introductory article in Cloud Block Storage to create new volume. But not much additional data was in the article was given about Rackspace Cloud Block Storage in that guide. In this article we will give the official links to Rackspace’s own guides on Rackspace Cloud Block Storage plus we will provide extra help.
Rackspace Cloud Block Storage : Official Links
So here are the official guides and information. Copy paste the links one by one in new browser tab to load the webpages.
First, you must know that what is Attaching and what is Mounting :
1 | http://www.rackspace.com/knowledge_center/article/cloud-block-storage-attaching-vs-mounting |
Second is how to create and attach a Rackspace Cloud Block Storage volume :
1 | http://www.rackspace.com/knowledge_center/article/create-and-attach-a-cloud-block-storage-volume |
And when you have created and attached, you must know how to detach and delete it as well :
1 | http://www.rackspace.com/knowledge_center/article/detach-and-delete-cloud-block-storage-volumes |
These all guides on Rackspace Cloud Block Storage is for the unmanaged clients. Managed Clients will get the official help and there is no need to create oneself except for learning or curiousness. But create a new server instance first for the managed servers.
Rackspace Cloud Block Storage : Our Brief Guide
Rackspace themselves written so nice and elaborated guide, there is practically very less to add. So follow the guide to create a new instance of Rackspace Cloud Block Storage. The extra points are :
You can use this Rackspace Cloud Block Storage as remote storage, in other words you can Mount a Filesystem on your Mac, PC or Linux. Windows is an absolute OS for the advanced users. So we are giving the basics for OS X, which are basically the same in Linux. Firewalls and routers between your Mac and the Remote Server do not block (1) Port 22 : For SSH (2) Port 139 : For SMB or Samba (3) Port 548 : Apple’s Personal File Sharing. You can configure your Mac OS X 10.8’s firewall settings too.
There is a Free software named MacFuse :
1 | http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/downloads/list |
You can mount quite easily using this software. Ubuntu, SuSE has own mounting softwares. This thing is listed as “unsupported” still now at the MacFUSE site. It will work just like adding another remote server.
Regarding the command line part, the syntax to Mount a Filesystem on your Mac is :
1 | ssh -fN -L port-number:remote-server-ip-or-domain-name:port-number username@remoteserver |
It is obvious that you have to change the port-number, remote-server-ip-or-domain-name, username and IP with @remoteserver part. You can actually get a bit help if you run the ssh -fN -L command :
Another thing is, you can browse or login from Finder by right click on Finder icon and clicking the “Connect to Server…” option. The protocol however is not http. It is smb or afp. Yes, more complex work can be done on Mac using UNIX functions. Basically from here the difference between an UNIX and Unix-like OS starts. However 99% users (or more) never needs those features.
