Hello

(This is a community guide on how to setup Wasabi and Cloudflare, as a significantly cheaper replacement for Amazon S3 and Cloudfront.  The author has no affiliate arrangement with any of the companies listed in the guide and offers the guide as a free community resource.  You should consult with your hosting provider and / or server administrator before proceeding with the guide.)

BACKGROUND:

Invision Communities contain rich content, from forum attachments to gallery images to download files.  These resources add up over time. 

Here are real examples of communities that I provide server administration for:

- Website A: 400 GB of total storage and 1.2 TB of total monthly bandwidth 

- Website B: 800 GB of total storage and 14 TB of total bandwidth

Invision Community allows a file storage configuration with Amazon S3 and a content distribution network (CDN) of your choice:

 

WHAT IS WASABI?

Wasabi Cloud  is faster and cheaper than Amazon S3 for object storage, offers unlimited egress for bandwidth, and compatible with Cloudflare.  One of the biggest hidden expenses of using Amazon S3 is not the cost of storage itself, but the bandwidth to deliver objects in and out.  Wasabi does not charge for egress bandwidth, which can save on the majority of the true cost of Amazon S3. It also provides an S3-compliant interface, which means it can be used as a perfect drop-in replacement for Amazon S3 storage and immediately usable on all Invision Communities.   

Wasabi is 80% cheaper and 6x faster than Amazon S3, with 100% data immutability protection, and no data egress fees or API charges. Created by Carbonite co-founders and cloud storage pioneers David Friend and Jeff Flowers, Wasabi is on a mission to commoditize the storage industry. Wasabi is a privately held company based in Boston, MA.

In March of 2018, Wasabi pioneered the cloud storage industry’s first ‘unlimited free egress’ pricing plan. We are excited to join forces with Cloudflare and the Bandwidth Alliance, validating that the early business models of Cloud 1.0 vendors no longer applies in a world that expects unlimited everything.  What this means in practice is that you can use Cloudflare services (including the free plan) like blazing-fast DNS, WAF firewall, performance improvements on the fly, and much more.  Forums users will request a topic, and all static content can be picked up from Cloudflare's optimized services that will connect to Wasabi.

 

At the moment, Wasabi offers three Datacenters:

1)US-WEST

2)US-EAST

3)EU-CENTRAL 

One price. Lightning fast speed. No hidden fees.

You can check and compare the prices above.

 

GUIDE:

BEFORE PROCEEDING, PLEASE BACKUP YOUR DATA FIRST!

YOUR FILES WILL BE IN PRIVATE MODE AND WILL NOT BE ACCESSIBLE ON YOUR FORUM !

YOU MUST GET A PAID PLAN TO BE ABLE TO ACTIVATE THE INVISION FILE PERMISSIONS AND GET YOUR FILES ACCESSIBLE AT YOUR FORUMS.

JUST ADD YOUR CREDIT CARD NOW (AT YOUR PROFILE PAGE) AND THEY WILL CHARGE YOU 5,99$ FOR A MONTH FOR 1TB STORAGE AND UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH.

THE FREE TRIAL WILL NOT WORK FOR INVISION !

 

Step 1: Create a CName at CloudFlare

We start by creating a cname at Cloudflare:

cname -> cdn -> cdn.yourdomain.com.s3.eu-central-1.wasabisys.com  <--For Europe datacenter

or

cname -> cdn -> cdn.yourdomain.com.s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com  <--For US-WEST datacenter

or

cname -> cdn -> cdn.yourdomain.com.s3.wasabisys.com  <--For US-EAST datacenter

Like this:

 

Step 2: Create a bucket on Wasabi

First we sign up for a free account at Wasabi Cloud: https://wasabi.com/sign-up/

Then we create a bucket:

 

It is important to name it as: cdn.yourdomain.com

 

 

Then keep default suspend Versioning and Suspend Logging:

Then click CREATE BUCKET:

 

 

Step 3: Retrieve your Access Keys

Go to the menu on top left and click Access keys on the left. Click on "Create New Access Key."

 

Copy / save the access key and the secret key:

Step 4: Setting up a new file storage in ACP

Login to Admin Control Panel and navigate to Overview at the Files category and then click at the right side at Storage settings:

 

Then we click at Configurations and at the right side at Create New:

 

We select Amazon s3 and we add the following info:

Save it.

Step 5: Set the new storage at storage settings

Navigate to Storage settings and select from the drop down menu the new Amazon s3 bucket.

 

Keep only at your server your theme resources:

*Attachments and Downloads doesn't work out of the box as it seems there is some hardcoded code at Invision related to S3...

To make them work you just need to install the addon bellow: (tested with Invision 4.4.4).

 

Then wait for any Invision background tasks to finish and check.

I hope that you will benefit from this tutorial and get better performance while saving a lot of money 🙂

Enjoy!

OTHER NOTES:

If you are already using S3 then it is very easy to move straight to Wasabi by following the above tutorial as it is NOT needed to move back your files to server and then to Wasabi.

CREDITS

Credits to @Joel R for giving me the motivation to write this tutorial and providing screenshots from his Wasabi account and for editing the topic.

Thank you

Edited June 18, 20195 yr by ASTRAPI

So, I got this to work! It's quite simple actually.  Thank you to whoever created the tutorial.  A few gotchas: make sure to set CloudFlare to Full, if you do Full(Strict) you will get the SSL error that I described above. Also, make sure to use https:// in your CDN url. Other than that it's working great so far. 

Edited May 29, 20195 yr by ProSkill

2 hours ago, Joy Rex said:

No CDN - are there any good free CDNs you would/could recommend?

One of the biggest reasons for switching from AWS S3 to Wasabi is that you can use Cloudflare. 

Even if you don't have a need for third party storage like Amazon S3 or an S3 compatible storage, you should be investigating Cloudflare anyways with your server admin.  

Hello, looks very awesome thank you for supplying this. 

 

I currently use S3 and lambda so when a image is passed to my bucket that a lamba function is triggered using the kraken api to shrink the file size. Would something be simialr using your method ?

If you have enabled the Cloudflare then you should not have any direct download from Wasabi as all requested files will be going through Cloudflare that there is no limit.

12 hours ago, iamART said:

We need a updated version of all this. Does not work for 4.6 at least for those of us with a new installed forum.

The guide is still valid.  I'm guessing your problem is not being able to download the marketplace "S3 Compatible Downloads" plugin from the AdminCP.  That's because it has not been flagged for 4.6 yet even though it actually works.  

Just download it from:

Choose that you are installing version 4.4 which will let you download the file without being told to go through the AdminCP marketplace.  Once you have it downloaded, go to your AdminCP.  Install it by going to the Plugins section and choosing "Manual Installation".  

Outside of that, follow the guide as written.  

You don't need to use Wasabi's SSL.  You don't need a custom certificate.  You should be using CLOUDFLARE to secure traffic.  it has it's own wildcard certificate that is used that will cover anything.yourdomain.com.  

The request flow should be USER -> cdn.yourdomain.com (CLOUDFLARE) -> cdn.yourdomain.com.wasabisys.com (WASABI) -> USER

Create cdn.yourdomain.com within CF's DNS interface.  It should be a CNAME pointing to cdn.youdomdomain.com.s3.wasabisys.com (or whatever CNAME you have from Wasabi).  You need to make sure the Proxied status is set to Proxy meaning the cloud is orange not grey.  

You also need to make sure your CF SSL certificate is not set to Strict mode.  Go to the SSL/TLS section.  You'll see options for "Off", "Flexible", "Full", and "Full (Strict)".  Make sure "Full" is selected and not Strict.   

Edited October 13, 20213 yr by Randy Calvert

It was about an hour or so for me. 

1 hour ago, Randy Calvert said:

Cloudflare is saying the entry you have for "cdn" is incorrect.  What value do you have there?

Not entirely sure what you mean but if it's the CNAME CDN we set up from the tutorial I have

cdn.throneofgeeks.com.s3.eu-central-1.wasabisys.com

Can this solution be applied to Invision Community 5? What if I wanted to reverse the process and move the files the other way, from Wasabi back to the server, and switch back to self-hosting is that possible?