CloudBuddy Analytics: A Review.

CloudBuddy Analytics is the new kid on the block, for analysing Amazon S3 log data. Still at the version 0.1 BETA but its simple, easy and exhaustive. Apart from this it is Open Source, uses AWStats engine to analyse the data and comes bundled with the compact Abyss Webserver.

I will discuss the three elements, simple, easy and exhaustive , of CloudBuddy Analytics, and also what are there issues that I came across.

Simple

For any Open Source project to succeed they must follow K.I.S.S. And CloudBuddy Analytics does that without much fuss. There is no extra details that you would see, when you start using it. Starting from the login screen till the time i seen my reports the operations were simple.

So the steps to see your logs is just five steps away.

1. Start the CloudBuddy Analytics Service - which will start the Abyss WebServer.
2. Open CloudBuddy Analytics Application Console.
3. Create User-Account with your AWS account Credentials.
4. Select the Bucket you wish to Subscribe to see Analytics.
5. Click on "Show Analytics".

I could login the second time using the User-Account I created the first time around. The choice of softwares they have packaged too are simple, like, the Abyss Webserver is quite with its small memory stamp and the AWStats engine too is a well known Statistical engine for Webserver Logs, FTP logs, SMTP logs, etc.

Easy

I guess there is a fine line between simplicity and ease of use. And it natuarally flows from simplicity many a times. The installer is easy to use by keeping it precise. Just that there are two dependencies that I had to download and install before proceeding with CloudBuddy Analytics install.

1. Microsoft Visual C++ redistributable Patch.
2. Strawberry Perl.

Once I had them the prerequisites the installed, the CloudBuddy Analytics installation was straightforward.

Then follow then i followed the 5 Simple steps and was in the main page of CloudBuddy Analytics.

The page was not cluttered, basically there was no info, but very cognitive. I just needed to select a bucket and click on "Subscribe".

Then I saw two links "Unsubscribe" and "Show Analytics". Latter was what i had installed this for, so I clicked it and waited. After a couple of minutes wait I got my reports. Which were pure vanilla AWStats reports, but detailed.


Exhaustive

The AWStats engine is a pretty well known Analytics engine for generating reports for the web server logs, ftp logs. And the CloudBuddy team has done well to choose the AWStats are the backend engine for generating the S3 reports.

Hence CloudBuddy Analytics generates an exhaustive list of Analytics report on S3 Bucket Usage. The feature list is enough to talk about the it.

• Configure Multiple AWS Accounts
• Caching for faster reports
• Automatic log enabling capability
• Month-wise reports
• Bandwidth Usage
• Number of visits, number of unique visitors, visit durations and last visits
• Days of week and rush hours (pages, hits, KB for each hour and day of week)
• Domains/countries of hosts visitors (pages, hits, KB, 269 domains/countries detected, GeoIP detection)
• Most viewed files/pages
• Most accessed File types
• OS used (pages, hits, KB for each OS, 35 OS detected)
• Browsers used
• Search engines, keyphrases and keywords used to find your site (The 115 most famous search engines are detected like yahoo, google, altavista, etc.)
• HTTP errors (Page Not Found with last referrer, ...)

The positives are...

• Simple Installation
• Its got an intutive UI
• Followed the KISS philosophy
• Choice of AWStats Engine
• Exhaustive reports

The negatives are...

• Vanilla reports
• Time in processing data
• Dependencies could have been bundled
• Easy to get lost if you are not used to AWStats
• Lack of documenting the reports

CloudBuddy Analytics is still a development in progress. But it could an effective tool to use, for administrators.

CloudBuddy Analytics could be downloaded from here. And you could read more about it here