USER GUIDE | FilSwan FS3 Version2.0

4 min readDec 13, 2021

1. Creating a bucket

To get started, you can click the red button with a plus sign on the bottom right corner. It will pop up 2 yellow icons (upload files and create buckets) by clicking the red button. Files can not be uploaded without a bucket. The first thing is to choose the “Create buckets” button in yellow, name it and press Enter/Return key to confirm.

2. Loading files

Within a bucket, you can upload your files by choosing the “Upload files” button in yellow which is right above the “Create bucket” button. Same as before, to appear the “upload files” button, you need to click the red button with the plus sign on it.

3. Single file operations

Once your file is uploaded on FS3, you will see three dots on the right side of the file. The operations to the file include “Delete object”, “Share object”, “Backup to Filecoin” and Download object”.

3.1 Backup to Filecoin (Online Deals)

There are 2 ways to choose your preferred storage provider.

If you have a specific storage provider you want to work with, and you have the provider ID number, you can just simply fill it directly into the provider ID input field.

If this is your first time to backup or you do not have anyone on your mind at the moment, you can choose your storage provider based on the list we provide for you.

After choosing your provider, filling out the offered price and setting up the duration for the storage, you can click the “Send” button” in green to send the request. You should get a list number of “Deal CID” if your deal is sent successfully.

4. Bucket operations

The bucket-level operations on FS3 include “Delete” bucket, “Retrieval” and “Backup to Filecoin”. By clicking the three dots in vertical next to the bucket, you should be able to see these options.

4.1 Backup to Filecoin(Online bucket-deals)

To back up a whole bucket to Filecoin, the procedure is the same as a single-file backup. You can choose your storage provider either by filling in a specific provider ID or selecting from our provided list. You also need to fill the price input field and the duration input field. After clicking the “Send” button” in green to send the request, you should get a list number of “Deal CID” when your deal is sent successfully.

5. Backup plan

Users can backup the entire volume with customized schedulers (Backup Daily/ Backup Weekly) to Filecoin Network.

Create a backup plan by choosing the “Backup Plans” page.
You can view your created backup plans on the “Backup Plans” page.
As soon as the creation is complete, FS3 is sending volume backup tasks to the assigned storage provider automatically using the FilSwan Autobid module (click Autobid to know how it works).
If you choose to backup daily, FS3 will compress the entire data volume into a car. file and upload it to the Filecoin Network every 24 hours. You can check all your backup jobs by choosing the “Jobs” page, and here shows you all the information about your jobs.
Once the backup process has been completed, the status under backup jobs on the “Jobs” page will change from “Running” to “Completed”.

Price: It is valued as GiB/epoch
Duration: Duration for keeping the backup needs to be in the range of 180 to 540.

6. Rebuild backup volume

To store your entire FS3 instance from one of your backups, you can use the FS3 “Rebuild Image” service. FS3 will fetch an entire backup from Filecoin Network and overwrite your existing system.

Rebuild image is accessible only when backup job status is completed. Users can not rebuild images when the backup process is still running.

First, go to the “Jobs” page and all your backup jobs are listed here.
Second, make sure you are under “backup jobs” for rebuilding an image (restore a backup). You can switch to rebuild jobs next to the backup jobs to view all your rebuild history.
Third, on the very right side of each job, you should be able to click “Rebuild Image” when the status is “Completed”.
Next, after clicking “Rebuild Image”, a pop-up window will show as above. Please check your information and make sure you are rebuilding from the correct backup. Your backup name will show in bold font, as circled in blue.
Finally, choose “OK” to confirm your rebuild process and choose “Cancel” to quit rebuilding backup.