file-share

Personal file share server on AWS — Samba for macOS Finder integration and FileBrowser for web-based file management. Accessible exclusively over the site-to-site VPN.

Architecture

• EC2 — t4g.small (ARM64, Amazon Linux 2023) in the private subnet
• Samba — SMB file share at /data/share, optimized for macOS (vfs_fruit)
• FileBrowser — Web UI on port 8080, backed by the same /data/share directory
• EBS — 500 GiB gp3 data volume (separate from root), encrypted
• DLM — Daily EBS snapshots, 30-day retention
• SSM — Session Manager for instance access (no SSH key)

Access

Requires VPN connection to the office network (10.10.0.0/16).

Finder (SMB)

1. Finder > Go > Connect to Server
2. Enter smb://<private-ip>/files
3. Authenticate with adam and the password from file-share/smb-password in Secrets Manager

FileBrowser (Web)

Open http://<private-ip>:8080 in a browser.

Secrets

Both stored in AWS Secrets Manager:

Secret	Purpose
file-share/smb-password	Samba user password
file-share/filebrowser-password	FileBrowser admin password

Create these secrets before deploying the stack:

aws secretsmanager create-secret --name file-share/smb-password --secret-string '<password>'
aws secretsmanager create-secret --name file-share/filebrowser-password --secret-string '<password>'

Deploy

npm install
npx cdk deploy

The stack outputs the instance's private IP for SMB and FileBrowser access.

Expanding Storage

The 500 GiB data volume can be expanded without downtime:

1. Modify the volume size in lib/file-share-stack.ts
2. Deploy: npx cdk deploy
3. SSH into the instance via SSM and resize the filesystem:

   sudo growpart /dev/xvdf 1  # if partitioned
   sudo resize2fs /dev/xvdf