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Running the Amazon S3 collector

Note

The latest version of the Collector is 2.159. To view the release notes for this version and all previous versions, please go here.

Generating the command or YAML file

This section walks you through the process of generating the command or YAML file for running the collector from Windows or Linux or MAC OS.

To generate the command or YAML file:

  1. On the Organization profile page, go to the Settings tab > Metadata collectors section.

  2. Click the Help me set up a collector button.

  3. On the On-prem collector setup prerequisites screen, read the pre-requisites and click Next.

  4. On the On which platform will this collector execute? screen, select if you will be running the collector on Windows or Mac OS or Linux. This will determine the format of the YAML and CLI that is generated in the end. Click Next.

    general_01.png

  5. On the Choose metadata collector type you would like to setup screen, select Amazon S3. Click Next.

  6. On the Configure a new on premises Amazon S3 Collector screen, set the following properties and click Next.

  7. On the next screen, set the following properties and click Next.

    Table 2.

    Field name

    Corresponding parameter name

    Details

    Required?

    AWS Credential Source File Path

    source=${HOME}/.aws/credentials

    Provide the location of the credentials file you generated for authentication. For example, ${HOME}/.aws/credentials

    Yes

    AWS Region

    --aws-region=<awsRegion>

    The AWS region used to initialize the S3 client.

    Yes

    Max Resources

    --max-resources=<maxResources>

    The maximum resources the collector should harvest. More details on when this parameter should be set are available here.

    No



  8. On the next screen, provide the Collector configuration name. This is the name used to save the configuration details. The configuration is saved and made available on the Metadata collectors summary page from where you can edit or delete the configuration at a later point. Click Save and Continue.

  9. On the Finalize your Amazon S3 Collector configuration screen, you are notified about the environment variables and directories you need to setup for running the collector. Select if you want to generate Configuration file ( YAML) or Command line arguments (CLI). Click Next.

  10. The next screen gives you an option to download the YAML configuration file or copy the CLI command. Click Done. If you generated a YAML file, click Next.

  11. The Amazon S3 Collector command screen gives you the command to use for running the collector using the YAML file.

  12. You will notice that the YAML/CLI has following additional parameters that are automatically set for you.

    Important

    Except for the collector version, you should not change the values of any of the parameter listed here.

    Table 3.

    Parameter name

    Details

    Required?

    -a= <agent>

    --agent= <agent>

    --account= <agent>

    The ID for the data.world account into which you will load this catalog - this is used to generate the namespace for any URIs generated.

    Yes

    --site= <site>

    This parameter should be set only for Private instances. Do not set it for public instances and single-tenant installations. Required for private instance installations.

    Yes (required for private instance installations)

    -U

    --upload

    Whether to upload the generated catalog to the  organization account's catalogs dataset.

    Yes

    -L

    --no-log-upload

    Do not upload the log of the Collector run to the organization account's catalogs dataset.

    Yes

    dwcc: <CollectorVersion>

    The version of the collector you want to use (For example, datadotworld/dwcc:2.113)

    Yes



  13. Add the following additional parameter to test run the collector.

    • --dry-run If specified, the collector does not actually harvest any metadata, but just checks the database connection parameters provided by the user and reports success or failure at connecting.

  14. You can add the following parameter to the Command/YAML file to use these additional features.

    Table 4.

    Parameter name

    Details

    Required?

    --include-bucket 

    Specify the buckets to be collected. You can either provide the bucket name or a regular expression to match. Use the parameter multiple times for multiple specific buckets. For example, --include-bucket="bucketA" --include-bucket="bucketB".

    If multiple regular expressions are specified, the collector will harvest buckets that match any of them.

    No

    --exclude-bucket

    Specify the buckets to be excluded by the collector. You can either provide the bucket name or a regular expression to match. Use the parameter multiple times for multiple specific buckets. For example, --exclude-bucket="bucketA" --exclude-bucket="bucketB".

    If multiple regular expressions are specified, the collector will exclude buckets that match any of them. If both --include-bucket and --exclude-bucket are specified, --include-bucket takes precedence.

    No



Verifying environment variables and directories

  1. Verify that you have set up all the required environment variables that were identified by the Collector Wizard before running the collector. Alternatively, you can set these credentials in a credential vault and use a script to retrieve those credentials.

  2. Verify that you have set up all the required directories that were identified by the Collector Wizard.

Running the collector

Important

Before you begin running the collector make sure you have the correct version of collectors downloaded and available.

Running collector using YAML file

  1. Go to the server where you have setup docker to run the collector.

  2. Make sure you have download the correct version of collectors. This version should match the version of the collector specified in the command you are using to run the collector.

  3. Place the YAML file generated from the Collector wizard to the correct directory.

  4. From the command line, run the command generated from the application for executing the YAML file.

    Caution

    Note that is just a sample command for showing the syntax. You must generate the command specific to your setup from the application UI.

    docker run -it --rm --mount type=bind,source=${HOME}/dwcc,target=/dwcc-output \
  --mount type=bind,source=${HOME}/dwcc,target=${HOME}/dwcc --mount type=bind,source=${HOME}/.aws/credentials,target=/root/.aws/credentials \
  -e DW_AUTH_TOKEN=${DW_AUTH_TOKEN} -e HOME=${HOME} datadotworld/dwcc:2.124 \
  --config-file=/dwcc-output/config-amazon_s3.yml

  5. The collector automatically uploads the file to the specified dataset and you can also find the output at the location you specified while running the collector.

  6. At a later point, if you download a newer version of collector from Docker, you can edit the collector version in the generated command to run the collector with the newer version.

Running collector without the YAML file

  1. Go to the server where you have setup docker to run the collector.

  2. Make sure you have download the version of collectors from here. This version should match the version of the collector specified in the command you are using to run the collector.

  3. From the command line, run the command generated from the application. Here is a sample command.

    Caution

    Note that is just a sample command for showing the syntax. You must generate the command specific to your setup from the application UI.

    docker run -it --rm --mount type=bind,source=${HOME}/dwcc,target=/dwcc-output \
  --mount type=bind,source=${HOME}/dwcc,target=${HOME}/dwcc --mount type=bind,source=${HOME}/.aws/credentials,target=/root/.aws/credentials \
  datadotworld/dwcc:2.124 catalog-amazon-s3 --agent=8bank-catalog-sources \
  --site=solutions --no-log-upload=false --upload=true --api-token=${DW_AUTH_TOKEN} \
  --output=/dwcc-output --name=8bank-catalog-sources-collection \
  --upload-location=ddw-catalogs --aws-region=us-west

  4. The collector automatically uploads the file to the specified dataset and you can also find the output at the location you specified while running the collector.

  5. At a later point, if you download a newer version of collector from Docker, you can edit the collector version in the generated command to run the collector with the newer version.

Automating updates to your metadata catalog

Keep your metadata catalog up to date using cron, your Docker container, or your automation tool of choice to run the catalog collector on a regular basis. Considerations for how often to schedule include:

  • Frequency of changes to the schema

  • Business criticality of up-to-date data

For organizations with schemas that change often and where surfacing the latest data is business critical, daily may be appropriate. For those with schemas that do not change often and which are less critical, weekly or even monthly may make sense. Consult your data.world representative for more tailored recommendations on how best to optimize your catalog collector processes.

Managing collector runs and configuration details

In this section: