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Contact UsWe have had a lot of great interest in Cloud Loader, so the next question is "How do I start using it?" Well, here is a simple 5 Step guide to get going with Cloud Loader to start doing integration for $0.10 an hour (or less with a reserved instance).
Step 1 – Sign Up for EC2
Step 2 – Sign into the EC2 Management Console
The Console is where you can go to create and manage your EC2 Instances. Remember these are virtual servers and the console allows you to give them a static IP (Elastic IP), control the Security Group and stop and start your instances. First off you need to create a new instance of the Cloud Loader AMI.
Step 3 – Create a Cloud Loader Instance
Click on Instances→ Launch Instance→ Community AMIs and search on “Cloud_Loader” to find the Cloud Loader AMI. Click the Select button.
After clicking Select you need to specify some specifics about your instance. You will only need one instance and it can be a “Small” instance which will be fine to run the Cloud Loader.
Next click on “Create” next to the Key Pair Name option, enter a name for your key pair and download the key pair. This will be required to SSH into your Cloud Loader instance.
Next you need to pick a Security Group for the instance. You can use the default one or optionally specify other settings (which ports will be open). EC2 by default has all ports closed except 22 for SSH.
Last Click “Launch” to launch your instance. This will take 3-4 minutes to boot and fully launch.
Step 4 – Connect to your Instance
If you are using a PC you will need to use an SSH client such as PUTTy to log into your instance. Click here for Windows instructions.
If you are using a Mac you can use the native terminal to connect. Click here for detailed instructions on how to set up your certs and bash profile.
Step 5 – Configure your Instance
(Remember this is built on Apex Data Loader, so look here to learn more about it)
• After logging in go to the /usr/local/dataloader directory
• Create an FTP user on the Cloud Loader instance to use for the inbound FTP of data (the .csv file you want to load into Salesforce).
• Edit the config.properties file with your username and password for SFDC
Note: You will need to include your security token at the end of your password if you don’t whitelist the Amazon Elastic IP within Salesforce
• Edit the process-conf.xml file with the data loader processes you want to run
• Edit the automate-dl script to configure the email address you would like to use to send reports to.
• Setup a cron to run the automate-dl script (the way you schedule automated processes in UNIX)
Final Notes
Once you have tested this approach it is likely you will want to modify the script or approach to suit your own business need. With EC2 you can use Cloud Loader as a base AMI and then configure your own AMI based upon it with your own unique additions.
You may also like to utilize EBS (Elastic Block Storage) with Cloud Loader to have persistent storage of your configuration files, incoming integration files or log files. We plan to add this functionality in an upcoming release. If you have any further suggestions for Cloud Loader, please email us at: support@modelmetrics.com
