1. Connect to newly launched VM instance

  • Using RDP client connect to VM instance with the default account name and password configured by the cloud provider.
  • Change the default password to your own password.
  • Optionally create additional users if needed.

2. Start the Crossmeta Drivers

  • Launch Windows Command Prompt or PowerShell in Administrator mode.

  • Navigate to Crossmeta installation directory c:\program files\crossmeta and run the script service_crossmeta.cmd as follows.


    C:\Users\Administrator>cd "\Program Files\crossmeta" 
C:\Program Files\crossmeta>service_crossmeta.cmd status 
cxvfs is STOPPED cxfuse is STOPPED
cxnfs is STOPPED cxhfs is STOPPED 
cxvfsmgr is STOPPED
C:\Program Files\crossmeta>service_crossmeta.cmd start 
Starting Crossmeta kernel driver.
The CROSSMETA Manager service is starting. 
The CROSSMETA Manager service was started successfully. 
Running Crossmeta 2.0.2-RELEASE #240: Mon Apr 8 18:17:44 PDT 2019 on WINNT/10.0_Build 
C:\Program Files\crossmeta>
  • Once Crossmeta drivers have loaded successfully the Crossmeta V: drive will be available for your use


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3. Configure your first object storage

objbaker is the program that provides access to object storage for the cloud gateway software. To start with the configuration you would need access key and secret generated by your provider, if you are using object storage in multi-cloud environment or if the compute engine was not authorized to perform any S3 object access operations.

For AWS EC2 instance created with IAM role that authorizes S3 operations it may not be required to configure the accessId and accessKey within the software. Instead use the option --accessEC2IAM=ROLE option with objbaker. This will acquire S3 credentials from EC2 machine via IAM role.

  • Create access file with credentials

Create file v:\etc\.s3wasabi_passwd using notepad and add the access information in this format accessId:accessKey. The accessId could be account ID, and the accessKey is base64 encoded secret.

By starting filename with dot you would avoid Windows adding any .txt extension to the above file. Also make sure there are no extraneous characters or newlines in this file.  This file is accessed by Crossmeta programs as /etc/.s3wasabi_passwd, while WIN32 programs access as v:\etc\.s3wasabi_passwd


  • Location of SSL certficate bundle

    For SSL to work the curl library needs to know the location of its CA CERT bundle, which is installed in c:\program files\crossmeta.  When you run the objbaker this information is provided with --cacert=ca-bundle.crt option . While running interactively since the startup directory is c:\program files\crossmeta this would work. But when the program is running as NT service the startup directory would be c:\windows\syswow64. In that case either copy ca-bundle.crt to c:\windows\syswow64 or specify full pathname to --cacert option.

  • List buckets with objbaker

    Before configuring object disk with Windows, make sure objbaker can list the buckets from your storage account.  The baseURL is the most important parameter and should match with access URL of the cloud provider.  You should use HTTPS for secure SSL access.


    C:\Program Files\crossmeta>objbacker.exe  --cacert=ca-bundle.crt --ssl  --accessFile=/etc/.s3azure_passwd
--s3Type=azure --baseURL=https://zfstest.blob.core.windows.net/  --bucketCommand=list



    C:\Program Files\crossmeta>objbacker.exe  --cacert=ca-bundle.crt  --ssl --accessFile=/etc/.s3amazon_passwd
 --authVersion=aws2  --baseURL=https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/  --bucketCommand=list



    C:\Program Files\crossmeta>objbacker.exe --cacert=ca-bundle.crt --ssl  --accessFile=/etc/.s3google_passwd 
 --s3Type=google_s3  --baseURL=https://storage.googleapis.com/   --bucketCommand=list






    C:\Program Files\crossmeta>objbacker.exe  --cacert=ca-bundle.crt --ssl  --accessFile=/etc/.s3wasabi_passwd
 --baseURL=https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/   --bucketCommand=list


    For troubleshooting add --debug-http to the above command to get detailed REST API output.

  • Configure object storage as VHD

    Before configuring object disk with Windows make sure the Crossmeta Fuse driver has started. If required start the driver as follows

    C:\Program Files\crossmeta>net start cxfuse

The CROSSMETA FUSE kernel mode driver service was started successfully.





  • Mount object storage disk

    Logical Size of VHD up to 64TB allowed
    Block size of 1MB to reduce cloud object access charges
    Directory to use as mount point in Crossmeta drive
    No caching 



C:\Program Files\crossmeta>objbacker.exe  --cacert=ca-bundle.crt  --accessFile=/etc/.s3wasabi_passwd  --authVersion=aws2 
 --baseURL=https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/ --directIO --noAutoDetect --size=10T --timeout=30 --blockCacheSize=100 
--blockCacheThreads=8 --minWriteDelay=5000 --md5CacheSize=1000000 --ssl --blockSize=1024K -o no_pagecache smbtest1  /mnt -f
objbacker.exe: auto-detection disabled; using configured block size 1m and file size 10t
 INFO: s3backer process 5312 for /mnt started
 INFO: mounting /mnt

Before configuring object disk with Windows make sure the Crossmeta Fuse driver has started. If required start the driver as follows
sc create objdisk1


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