Connecting Shade with Google Cloud Storage

Shade supports Bring-Your-Own-S3 (BYOS3) with multiple providers such as AWS, GCP, MinIO, Wasabi, Backblaze, and more. Here’s how to connect Shade with your existing GCP account.

Provisioning a New Bucket in Google Cloud Storage

Although provisioning a new bucket is not strictly necessary, we highly recommend provisioning a new bucket for Shade. Shade is unable to use files in existing buckets due to the nature of ShadeFS. Shade will create two new folders blobs and chunks to any bucket that you connect to it.

To create a new bucket in GCS, sign in to your account, head to cloud storage, and “Create a New Bucket”:

ShadeFS does not require any other specific properties to be set on the bucket. You may opt to replicate data, log, or set up versioning as you prefer for your business.

Configuring CORS

Cross-Origin Resource Sharing is an important characteristic that allows buckets to be accessible from other origins (such as https://app.shade.inc). This is critical for Shade to access and download original media for you from our app. In order to set up CORS, you will need to follow these steps here to install the gcloud CLI and configure CORS.

It is recommended to use the following JSON:

[
  {
    "origin": ["*"],
    "method": ["*"],
    "responseHeader": ["*"],
    "maxAgeSeconds": 3600
  }
]

Creating HMAC Keys

In order for Shade to access your GCS bucket, you will need to provision an HMAC key for a service account.

Head to Cloud Storage > Settings > Interoperability to access or generate your HMAC keys.

Once you create a new key, copy the created access and secret key to your clipboard and save this for the next few steps.

Creating a BYOS Drive in Shade

Reaching this point, you should have successfully acquired the following items:

Shade Workspace
Bucket Name
Bucket Region
Access Key
Secret Key

If you do not have a workspace already, you can create one here.

Within your Shade workspace, you can now create a drive. Selecting the plus button next to “My drives” > BYOS drive.

Select a Template

Our templates help you get set up quickly with Shade with additional metadata and views that help you organize your files and assets. For more information about our AI you can check out our academy. In this case, we have selected Video Production.

Creating our GCS Drive

Next, we decide on our drive name and select our provider GCS.

Adding Our GCS Credentials

From the previous steps, we add our GCS credentials including our bucket name, region, access key and secret key.

This has to be the bucket name that you created in GCS. This is not the same as the drive name that you created on the previous screen.

Also note: if you selected multiple regions for your GCS bucket, you can safely select any region. All regions point to https://storage.googleapis.com

Uploading your first file

Once you have followed the previous steps, you are now able to upload your first file to your Shade drive. If configured successfully, you should be able to upload your file and mount the Shade drive to your computer from the Shade Desktop App

Troubleshooting Tips

If you have more questions - feel free to contact us at [email protected] or join our discord.

I can’t upload, what’s going on?

If you are unable to upload, please check your CORS settings on your bucket or your secret / access keys and its associated permissions.

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Last updated 20 days ago